Alright!
Hope everyone is enjoying basking in this most unusual of heatwaves to grace the month of July.
Also I must apologise for not releasing a blog any sooner last week, but due to my birthday celebrations and the imminent relaunch of the Hit The Floor Magazine party which culminated in a very, very raucous and debauched 24 hours in London (which ended with a wrestling match at 6.45am by Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square, London, and with my friend getting his chinos ripped clean off in front of a load of police officers and politicians readying themselves for work), it was rather tough to actually get down to it and crack on with what needed to be written!
So… what I am going to write about this week is something that was actually brought to my attention last week. Last Wednesday, Rolling Stone Magazine published an article which had, to put it lightly, sparked a lightning rod up the ass of political correctness. This article was focussed around one of the Boston Bombers, 19 year old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, also called ‘Jahar’ by his friends.
Now I must say before I go on, I actually found this article very informative and interesting, yet at the same time I could not help but wonder about the whole third person ‘storytelling’ perspective that had been displayed by the column’s writer Janet Reitman. In fact, what the article implies is an almost ‘tortured soul’ within Dzhokhar who was seemingly mentally bullied and intimidated by his older brother Tamerlan Tsarnev, and had been pressured in to the conversion to Islam due to the contempt and disgust of the American dream, and well… it just paints the picture of a child of war growing up in to a promising society, and being consistently put down and suffering within his own personal hell. In a tortured soul perspective, does this remind you of Kurt Cobain by any chance?
Anyway, whilst this was actually a well thought out article, this was not what the catalyst of the whole controversy surrounding this was; it was to do with what Rolling Stone Magazine had published on their front cover…
Yep! The actual sole survivor of the Boston bombings, gracing the front cover of Rolling Stone Magazine, with a brief saying ‘How a popular, promising student was failed by his family, fell in to radical Islam and became a monster’.
OK… now let us take this in another angle. What we are looking at here could well be perceived as a glorification of a terrorist, the same kind of glorification that could be warranted for a harrowing ‘rock and roll’ story, like previously mentioned… Kurt Cobain, Layne Staley, or someone with some kind of tortured past. But what is most ridiculous about all this, that with the display of Dzhokhar on the front cover of the publication, it is almost like they are telling a story in order for a sense of sympathy towards him.
*Ring-Ring* ‘Urm… Rolling Stone Magazine? Yes, I would like to inform you that you just won first prize for biggest fuck up of 2013. Also that your sense of moral conscience has just been flushed down the toilet along with that big fat steaming turd you left down there from that really dodgy bit of chicken you had.‘
Seriously… I mean how fucking insensitive could you actually be?! If you do not know about what happened in Boston, then check out this video below.
As you can see, this is no ordinary walk in the park and stealing someone’s lunch money. This is some serious shit that this guy and his brother done. It cost 3 people their lives, and a further 170 people to be lightly or seriously injured. So what the fuck is this guy doing on the front of the cover of one of the most established magazines in the world?!
It is absolutely absurd. That is like glorifying serial killer and rapist Ted Bundy with an article headline saying ‘Naughty Ted – Done some socially unethical shit, but he liked Jimi Hendrix so we feel sympathy for him’. It’s just is not right.
The biggest kick in the teeth personally speaking, is due to all of the rallying around and fundraising that bands and artists from all over have been contributing to the destruction and financial help of the victims of the Boston Bombings. Bands like New Kids On The Block, Boston, and even the hometown heroes Dropkick Murphys, performed a relief concert in order to help their community in such a terrible time. So much so that they demanded that their schedules be immediately changed due to wanting to help out for this cause. It was a wonderful experience to see how many people can actually unite in times of need like this.
But then… these fucking idiots from Rolling Stone Magazine try to swing an angle that he was just misguided, and deserved a little bit more exposure than he already has?! Well, that is just bad journalism. And with all this, pretty much morally pissed all over any efforts in trying to get things back to normal.
I for sure am not going to get in to any sort of religious or political argument, because those are two subjects that really do not interest me in the slightest. However, I think that it is safe to say that we as individuals can detect when something is either right or wrong.
What are your opinions on the Rolling Stone botch up? Leave your two cents below.
