An Incorrect Approach to Solving the Violence Problem

Dan Petrovitch

February 1st, 2014

Susan Schorn’s article “Sorry, Thank You, Please.” is exactly the type of piece her column’s name promises its readers: “Bitchslap: A Column About Women and Fighting.” It starts off promising, as she immediately establishes an irrefutable pathos through her blunt portrayal of David Albert Mitchell’s monstrosity. As I was reading the piece, I became more and more uncomfortable as she continued to expound upon the “violent offender’s” various assaults, rapes, and killings. I could sense her gaining more and more influence over my opinions, especially as she described him, “[haunting] the margins of a community, terrifying everyone and picking off the most vulnerable.” She efficiently and eloquently cleared the first rung of writing an effective persuasive essay through her depiction of Mitchell: I was transformed from a cynical, apprehensive first time reader into a thirsty apostle, ready to slurp up any valid conclusion or solution that she might present throughout the rest of the essay. But despite her clear intentions to lead the charge in a bold new fight for the well-being and safety of women, she simply doesn’t follow through. She never puts her carefully constructed pathos to the proper use, and instead chooses to lead her captivated readers to nothing more than inappropriate conclusions and weak pleas for action.

Don’t get me wrong: I wouldn’t question her motivations for writing the piece, as I believe that her heart was in the right place, and that her true goals for the essay were to offer her sincere condolences to broken assault victims, to thank them for arbitrarily and unwittingly bearing the primary burden in the vicious battle to reduce such assaults, and to beg for the arrival of a savior who can fix the inadequate police protection and court systems. But her execution is definitely flawed, as she ends up presenting these civil protection infrastructures as more of a problem than a solution. Although she does an applaudable job of conveying the full extent of Mitchell’s evil, she never quite manages to analyze his crimes as results of his natural depravity. She treats Mitchell as a phenomenon who should be understood, accepted for what he is, and taken as a given, while she defames the police and the court systems of West Virginia, Florida, Oklahoma, North Carolina, South Carolina, and New York as failed “public safety apparatus[es].” To insightful readers, her attempts to construct an alternate reality in which the cops and lawyers are more to blame than the actual killer should seem ridiculous. It is dangerous to vilify the people whose job it is to protect the weak; and it is paramount to maintain the proper perspective, to recognize the severe difference between the deranged and criminal cause of the misery and the merely inefficient and insufficient, yet undoubtedly positive and indispensable, response to that misery.

It would have been more appropriate for Schorn to condemn these institutions in the manner that she did had she offered any feasible solutions that might solve this crisis. But she did not, and therefore her article comes off as more whiney than well-meaning, more modern media white noise than effective journalistic problem solving. She challenges West Virginia’s “crappy” police protection and court systems, which can’t even enable, “a community to protect its little old ladies from a serial rapist and murderer.” Yet her ultimate call to action is no more than a meek, “You know better than we do what needs to happen. We want to help. Just ask us. Please.” This meager excuse of a solution is a reiteration of her earlier plea: “Could we please try to do better next time? Police officers, detectives, DAs, prosecutors, social workers–please: Tell us how we prevent this.”

Even if she had presented some appropriately developed solutions that could really fix this widespread problem of inept public safety systems, her voice would struggle to be heard. The incredible breadth of controversial issues our society faces, combined with the incredible depth of all types of news and editorial coverage of such issues, would all but seal her article’s fate as another faltering trumpet of progress in an unbearably loud orchestra of misfortune; but her complete inability to present tangible answers in response to her tragically tangible questions completely ensures this fate. Her article loses its kick by the end, and her once pathos-driving, artistic portrait of Mitchell’s evil is rendered ineffective, aesthetic fluff. Schorn begins writing something that has the potential to shake the reader’s reality, and, in the process, rally legions upon legions of dedicated troops to help her fight her good fight. But she finishes with something that lacks the necessary conviction or substance to suppress even one ripple in the terrifying and tumultuous sea of violence and evil that surrounds our little island.