Why is it that nothing captures the attention of a society like a tragedy?\u00a0 Across the world, nations of different people and people of different nations have joined together to mourn for Japan.\u00a0 That unified us, in a sense.<\/p>\n
In the Dayton area, we\u2019ve had two horrific moments in the last few months that dominated the local news scene.\u00a0 In this new era of social networking\u2014and by extension, social discussion\u2014it is near impossible to avoid the news.\u00a0 So even if you don\u2019t read the newspaper or watch the local newscast, you ran a decent chance of catching wind of either.<\/p>\n
The first story that captured us was the tragic killing of Deputy Sheriff Suzanne Hopper, a mother of two.\u00a0 Just in case you didn\u2019t understand the scope of that story, consider that The Daily Mail newspaper in England picked it up.\u00a0 When that happens\u2014and it doesn\u2019t often\u2014the power of the story shouldn\u2019t be ignored.\u00a0 Hopper\u2019s death was heart-wrenching.<\/p>\n
Then came the slaying of Tiffany Brown and Gladis and Dick Russell.\u00a0 That entire episode lasted weeks.\u00a0 The Dayton Daily News and all of the local TV networks covered it extensively.\u00a0 It deserved the attention.\u00a0 The police searched and searched for Samuel Littleton II, whom they suspected had killed Brown and\u2014at least at the time\u2014was suspected of having abducted the Russells.<\/p>\n
As the police searched for Russell, we can remember hearing people say things like; \u201cWhy would he take those old people?\u201d; \u201cWhat could they have done to him?\u201d; and, in the end, the saddest of all, \u201cI just hope those two are okay.\u201d<\/p>\n
They weren\u2019t okay.\u00a0 Littleton has admitted to killing all three, and will spend the rest of his life in prison.<\/p>\n
Why did those stories catch us?\u00a0 Is it a matter of scope?\u00a0 Both the Hopper and Littleton stories had twists and turns.\u00a0 Take the Hopper story.\u00a0 First, we find out that she\u2019s a decorated cop who died in the line of fire.\u00a0 That itself is a sad story.\u00a0 Then we find she is a mother of two, and we see via TV the outpouring of support from the local community and from across the country.<\/p>\n
So, again.\u00a0 Why does it take a tragedy to get and hold the collective attention of a community?\u00a0\u00a0 Not that the community could\u2019ve stopped either of these two tragedies from occurring, but in the sense that the good stories don\u2019t always resonate in the same way.\u00a0 A nice story about a local foodbank receiving enough donations to stay afloat won\u2019t stick with you.\u00a0 It might make you smile, but do you find yourself bringing it up in idle conversation?<\/p>\n
Maybe you do.\u00a0 But we don\u2019t see that too often.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Why is it that nothing captures the attention of a society like a tragedy?\u00a0 Across the world, nations of different people and people of different nations have joined together to mourn for Japan.\u00a0 That unified us, in a sense. In the Dayton area, we\u2019ve had two horrific moments in the last few months that dominated […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":229,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tartan-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5s3vR-1Ee","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/229"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6338"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6338\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6344,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6338\/revisions\/6344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}