Sean Murphy v. Rolling Stone

Sean Murphy's behavior bothers me.

It's not that I care that he's made the case against Dzokhar Tsarnaev any harder or less likely to result in a conviction, because I doubt that is meaningfully the case. It's that the emotions of it and reasons for doing it belie a certain view of the world I find distasteful. To all appearances, Sean Murphy is the kind of guy that reads magazines for the pictures.

What else to make of his interpretation of this story?

If he cannot grasp the use of the photo— it's iconic, it was instantly memefied, and so is guaranteed to grab your attention, and you're told in the subhead that it's about, "How a popular, promising student was failed by his family, fell into radical Islam and became a monster") and the way it serves as counterpoint to the story, how can we trust his judgement on the stand? Why was he permitted to serve on the police force in the first place? That he thinks that the photographs he released tell the whole truth, or even more truth, about Dzokhar Tsarnaev (or at least the only truth that matters in the court of public opinion) is disturbing. The correct result for such behavior is the loss of his job.

If your entire argument relies on interpreting the photo absent its 11000-word context, you have weak sauce. Furthermore, the notion that this photo "glorifies terrorism" is patently absurd. It cannot be understood without the headline and accompanying article, and if you cannot manage to absorb all of it before reacting, then I feel comfortable dismissing your opinion.

If you would prefer to retreat to the argument that the wounds are too raw a mere four months on, I'll have to ask when is it OK?  Go back and review the 9/11 coverage. There were seemingly endless words written in its wake that were probably too soon. And promoting a war on false pretenses using it as a justification? I was a supporter of the Iraq War (should have listened to Scott Ritter). Even I knew that the link to bin Laden was tenuous at best (The other lesson of the Iraq War? Never permit the seller to pretend that secret information that isn't independently verified is casus belli.).

Sean: you have PTSD. Seek counseling. It works.