Dylan Roof, his Manifesto and treatment should re-define Today’s Top Story

The media is all a buzzed by the Charleston shooter and his ramblings about why he committed murder of those unarmed victims in the church.  My first thought was where are the NRA members who claim that the best way to stop a bad man with a good is for good men to carry one?  They are examining his writings and using his words to define the stance he took but think back to the photos of how he was treated in his capture.  I do not recall military style weapons and equipment used to take him down and I do not recall anyone placing a bullet proof vest over the torso of anyone else that they captured.

When you stop to dissect the differences between how one class of criminal is handled when compared to another class of criminal, you may began to see a disturbing pattern, or maybe it is just me.  We classify something like this, the Newtown Shooting, the Colorado mass killings and others as breaking news and today’s top story when it really is not.  We glorify murder and mayhem as if it is some Hollywood stage play instead of presenting the true breaking news and top stories.  The top stories are not the evil that men do because men will always do evil, the top stories are the good that men do because very few ever get aired.  Image, if you will, what our society would be like if we played the good acts of human beings instead of the bad ones of a few evil players.  Image more stories like the one found in USA Today titled “Little Boy Forms a Special Bond with a Community Member”.  In this story it is written that “when two-year-old Deacon Ross is asked who his best friend is, he does not hesitate in answering. Deacon struck up a special friendship with O Dee the garbage man on his family's route. The pair have the most adorable friendship that was unfortunately forced to come to a bittersweet end because Deacon's family is moving to a different neighborhood. The video begins by showing Deacon helping his mother make a gift basket so they can give it to O Dee later when he comes by the house. It's obvious just from listening to Deacon talk about his best friend that he really has a love for O Dee. The minute that O Dee pulls up on the back of a garbage truck, Deacon's entire face lights up. The friends share a few special moments together before Deacon and his mom give O Dee his present and say goodbye. While it pained me to see Deacon having to bid farewell to his best friend, I still walked away from this video smiling over their special relationship.”

Since all that we digest is bad news, it is no wonder; we are practically immune to anything that evil does in this world.  We have become so fixated with evil that we now find any decent act as suspicious.  This is a direct result of top stories being bad news and good stories not even making it into our local newscast until possible the final few minutes of a broadcast by then we are so harden that the good news has no chance of breaking through and making us feel more human.  The manifesto written by Roof misses greatly the lesson that two year old Deacon Ross teaches us.  Deacon does not care about color nor does it bother him of his best friend’s occupation.  All he knows is this person takes time to share with him, treats him with love and listens when he talks.  Wonder why it so hard for the adults to do this?