A Round-Up Of Terrible People Who Still Received More Flattering News Coverage Than The Late Michael Brown

For those who don't know, The New York Times recently posted an article about the life of Michael Brown, the teenager who was recently gunned down in Ferguson, MO. The piece, which ran opposite of a flattering profile on the life of the (surviving) police officer who shot the poor boy six times for the crime of walking down the street, criticizes the dead teenager who can't even defend himself for being "no angel." His numerous faults include occasionally disagreeing with his parents, drawing on the walls as a toddler, trying to escape from his crib, dabbling in drugs and alcohol, and listening to "the rap music." These behaviors reflect a common psychological condition known as "being a god damn kid" — a condition which, yes, is fatal, but usually not for another 70 years or so.

If you're struggling to understand why painting a dead black teenager as a "thug" because he did the things that teenagers do, The Boston Globe offers a particularly eloquent takedown of the problematic of this piece. I suggest you read it. Meanwhile, I've rounded up some of my favorite responses from the around the web (read: seen on Twitter), comparing Brown's obituary to similar mainstream retrospectives on other individuals who are almost universally accepted to be more deservedly reviled.

People like the Unabomber...

"The simple, back-to-nature life of the man the Federal authorities believe is the technology-hating Unabomber [Editor's note: also serial murderer?] was plagued by rabbits and deer. They ate his carefully tended organic garden.

Shaggy-bearded and eccentric [Editor's note: also serial murderer?], Mr. Kaczysnki passed almost unnoticed in this rugged mountain town of loggers, ranchers, and outdoor enthusiasts, man of whom get by on odd jobs like trapping and guiding snowmobile tours. In many ways, he was as little noticed as the tough-looking Federal Bureau of Investigation agents who have been stalking him for five weeks through juniper groves and snowy ravines [Editor's note: for being a convicted serial murderer].

"I can understand his wanting to be private," said Karen Potter, owner of the Blackfoot Market, where Mr. Kaczynski sometimes stopped for cans of Spam and tuna and packets of stone-ground floor. "He's not the only recluse we have who is strange. There are people stranger than him [Editor's note: but he's the only strange local who's also a convicted serial murderer]."

Or Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the alleged Boston Marathon Bomber...

People in Cambridge thought of 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev — "Jahar" to his friends — as a beautiful, tousle-haired boy with a gentle demeanor [Editor's note: who also set off a pressure cooking bomb at a major public sporting event that killed 3 people and injured over 250 more}, soulful brown eyes and the kind of shy, laid-back manner that "made him that dude you could always just vibe with," one friend says [Editor's note: the kind of dude you could vibe with when he was not setting off pressure cooking bombs at major public sporting events and killing 3 people while injuring over 250 more]. He had been a captain of the Cambridge Rindge and Latin wrestling team for two years and a promising student. He was also "just a normal American kid," as his friends described him, who liked soccer, hip-hop {Editor's note: as opposed to "vulgar" rap music listened to and produced by Michael Brown] girls; obsessed over The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones; and smoked a copious amount of weed {Editor's note: unlike Michael Brown, who dabbled with weed in a way that was somehow different from the way that other high school kids did it, probably because he was black while he did it].

Or Timothy McVeigh, who perpetrated the Oklahoma City Bombings...

The lines under Timothy J. McVeigh's graduation picture in the Lockport, NY high school yearbook for 1986 suggest a contradiction in his personality: an easygoing young man, perhaps, but also one yearning for adventure {Editor's note: like blowing up a federal building which caused the deaths of 168 people while injuring nearly 700 others], for faraway places and a life more exotic than his drowsy hometown had to offer {Editor's note: like a federal correctional facility in Indiana. Or dead]. 

Or John Wayne "Killer Clown" Gacy...

Before his arrest, most people knew Mr. Gacy as the owner of a prosperous remodeling business, a Democratic precinct captain who threw annual parties for up to 400 guests and who entertained youngsters as Pogo the Clown.

Mr. Gacy, who in the mid-60s managed three Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants in Iowa, has requested for his last meal friend chicken, french fries, a coal and fresh strawberries.

Or Eric Harris, of Columbine infamy...

Some classmates said Eric Harris was good with computers and apparently maintained a Web site on America Online. Files on the Web site, discovered after the shootings, depicted him as an avid player of Doom and Quake, two popular computer games in which players stalk their opponents through dungeon like environments and try to kill them with high-powered weapons [Editor's note: Michael Brown also played violent video games, just like this mass murderer. Coincidence?].

The files on Mr. harris's Doom and Quake exploits contained programs he had written to work with the games, as well as his commentary on them. But despite coming in the context of computer games famous for their realistic violence, these files, scattered with enthusiastic observations and exclamation points, provided a glimpse at a teenager who seemed less angry and morbid than in the other postings attributed to him [Editor's note: violent video games contributed to Michael Brown's "no angel" status, but somehow managed to humanize the mass murderer].

And also Ted Bundy, who not only killed some 30+ people, but also sexually violated their corpses...

Theodore Robert Bundy was born to a young, single Philadelphia woman who raised him in Tacoma, Wash. But his mother, Louise Bundy, said there was never a shred of evidence in her son's first 28 years [Editor's note: not even drawing on the walls, or trying to escape from his crib?], before he became a murder suspect for the first time, to hint ataxy aberrant behavior. 

People familiar with his early years say he was a Boy Scout, a B-plus college student; he loved children, read poetry and was a rising figure in Republican politics in Seattle [Editor's note: haha]. The year the murders began there he was the assistant director of the Seattle Crime Prevention Advisory Commission and wrote a pamphlet for women on rape prevention.

"If anyone considers me a monster, that's just something they'll have to confront in themselves," he said in a 1986 interview with The New York Times [Editor's note: a newspaper which allowed a mass murderer and serial rapist to defend himself, but condemned an innocent black kid who was already dead]. "For people to want to condemn someone, to dehumanize someone like me is a very popular and effective, understandable way of dealing with a ear and a threat that is incomprehensible [Editor's note: this is a fantastic example of irony]."

Sure, each of the above-quoted pieces does at least go on to acknowledge the more sociopathic qualities of their respective subjects, in an attempt to draw a balanced and nuanced portrait of a complicated but ultimately real person. Don't get me wrong, I understand the importance of drawing this complicated portraits — especially in my work as a fiction writer, I'm endlessly fascinated by the inherent contradictions of people, and figuring out what makes them tick. But I wish that Michael Brown was afforded the same decency; he deserved at least that much. The New York Times article does reflect on some of his positive traits, sure, but the overwhelming message is "troubled youth" "had it coming" "black," whereas the killers above all received the treatment of "a quiet man" "no one saw it coming" "how could someone so like us do something so like that?"

And therein lies the difference.