GQ profile on Dylann Roof

Fuckin snuff him. Tomorrow morning. If he's not executed there needs to be coast-to-coast rioting.

But of course, if he gets off, it'll be years down the line and nobody will really care.

 

Trump had become very political years before that. He was a leader of the birther bullshit, so I would guess that's a pretty strong connection. The birther lie was certainly a racist dog whistle.

 

Does he deserve a sympathetic Nrw York Times GQ profile?

 

Nobody can write a fucking piece of long journalism any more without injecting themselves into it.

 

If you don't want to read about them, don't read about them.

 

At times it kind of works here, because the fact that she is a black woman interviewing these people possibly affects their reactions to her. It's a sort of necessary full disclosure. She ends the piece with a pretty florid soliloquy about her journey, as I recall, and it didn't work for me. (I felt bad about that. She was straining hard, and from a good place.)

Someone noted here that he doesn't want to read about murderers anymore, being humanize. Here, the writer says she initially intended to write about the victims, but got drawn into Roof. That's kind of interesting, because he comes off as utterly unremarkable and unmemorable within his community. (Almost all of these rampage killers seem to.)

In an interesting passage, the writer notes that most South Carolinians she had spoken with frame it as first and foremost an attack in a church, and that the racial aspect comes up "as an aside."

Made me recall the "Fox and Friends" "Attack on Faith" chryon.

 

I don't mind reading about them.

In the case of McVeigh, it was absolutely a case of anti-government white nationalism producing a terrorism. The recent PBS doc Oklahoma City...can't recommend it enough.

Newtown? Who doesn't want to know how that wicked evil came to be? I did.

Orlando? Again - tell me something about how this came to be.

Roof's been pretty clear on his motives - unremorseful too -but I'll read it.

 

What if the reporter wants to write about it to advocate for more gun control? Could they write about it then?

 

Yeah, I don't doubt it could work in this piece.

I'm just generally bothered that it has become general practice.

So often it's about the "writer's journey."

 

I felt chills run up my spine as a read it.

 

The whole scene with Roof's dad was as taut as a horror movie. She just goes to his house and talks her way in. He gives her a beer and cooperates. Then he turns on her. He sends rotweilers out to make sure that she left. And then he drops the "fake news" bomb on her when she tries to follow up about the birthday gift, which was money for a gun.

I suspect she saved her tougher questions for later in the interview, which journalist are wont to do (for practical reasons), and he wasn't having it.

 

God, I hate to bring her up, but the church scene reminded me somewhat of the Lena Dunham incident where she decided that Odell Beckham had judged her for being overweight, but in reverse. Here, the black reporter decided that the white people in the Congregation were judging her and looking at her askance, and even asked the pastor questions assuming that premise.