I am curious about the way this story is being covered, or discussed, or reported, (and not just here) and I confess that I am also fascinated about how the tone of coverage - or, the treatment - has differed from that of the Gabby Petito story.
So, yes: Among other things, this thread title irks me.
(And that is something I wish to return to, in the other thread: The whole disturbing, unpleasant and unsettling concept of "Deserving" victims, and the matter of whose death is covered, described, given news space or considered important; In other words - and this did come up in that thread - would the media and public attention have been so - almost salacious - in its intensity, if the victim had not been a young, attractive, white, middle-class woman, for other women, women who are people of colour, older women, poorer women, might not have merited the same degree of salacious sympathy in the news coverage; and that, too, begs questions of what a given society chooses to define as a "deserving victim", coupled with the almost sadistic and insanely detailed glee with which such murders are often reported).
Leaving aside the truly bizarre - yet weirdly intimate - relationship with guns (aka 2A stuff) which flavours every story involving the use of (or abuse of) firearms in the US - and, that does beg questions along the lines of: If guns are so widely available and frequently used in the US, why are safety protocols re the use of firearms anywhere - swimming pools, restaurants, pubs, theatres, schools, movie sets - not as automatic, well drilled, practised, and as natural as breathing?
Anyway, I will confess that when I first read the story, my initial reaction was almost a tired shrug - a shrug which conveyed, what is new, here?
This is because the trope of "Privileged white dude shoots someone" is really rather tired, or rather, I am tired of it.
If "privileged white dude" shoots a woman, person of colour, or someone who is considered to be an unimportant individual, well, in the context of US socio-economic and political culture, seriously, what is the story? This happens everday without consequence. It only becomes truly interesting (and a bit of a challenge for "privileged white dude") when privileged white dude shoots (and kills) another privileged white dude. But, that is not what we have here.
And, while the other thread named Gabby Petito (and it is tellingly rare for murdered women, or, women who are killed violently, and a bullet ranks - to my mind, irrespective of whether it was accidental or not - as a violent death - to be named - for, the focus is usually on the deeply distraught - male - killer, who is treated sympathetically, his actions excused and explained, if white, and condemned and punished, if a person of colour), I think it instructive that I have to consult a news story, look online, to remind myself of the name of the dead, the killed, cinematographer - it is Halyna Hutchins, for the record, - whereas every bloody news story, thread, reference is about Alec Baldwin.
Frankly, I am sick and tired of reading about Alec Baldwin. With an actor's ego, this is running the risk of becoming all about him, and not about the two people he shot, killing one while injuring the other.
Above all, I do not want to have to endure - let alone suffer - the sort of self-centred interviews on talk shows in the future, where a lacrymose Alec Baldwin bawls his eyes out while sobbing about how stressed, and upset and traumatised he is because of all of this.
Let us shift the focus just a little: Let us imagine the media and public reaction if a black actor, someone such as Samuel L Jackson, or Morgan Freeman, or Avery Brooks, did this.
Would it be quite so forgiving? Quite so swift to fluently explain away, or excuse, this action as an "accident"? Quite so rapid in finding the finger of blame pointed towards a convenient Other (armourer, untrained person, idiot)?
Or, let us imagine a female actor - someone such as Uma Thurman, or Helen Mirren, or, the late, great, Diana Rigg - these names occur because all three have played characters who "kicked ass" and indeed, wielded weaponry in some of the roles they played - doing such a stupid thing as pointing a gun, and shooting someone dead on a set. No, I can't imagine it either.
To my mind, it is almost irrelevant whether this was accidental or deliberate; it was careless, casual, outrageously irresponsible, disrespectful of others and utterly and atrociously and appallingly unprofessional.
"White male privilege" means that only privileged white males get to be this irresponsible, and be excused their conduct because the rest of the world, as always, cleans up after their mistakes, while the story that is told is still about them, their feelings, their trauma, their upset, while they leave the shattered and crushed and destroyed lives of irrelevant people in their wake and wander their way through life, all the while never being made accountable for their actions.
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