The Montana Standard Goes by No Standard

Did any of you notice the picture chosen to decorate the front page of The Montana Standard on Sunday March 25? Does tacky describe it? How about inhumane, cold, or just plain despicable? Do any of the decision makers at "The Standard" have children? They claim they do, I just can't imagine they think much of them, otherwise, they would not have allowed someone else's son's death scene (with its 6 litres of spilled blood)to be published in a newspaper. Typically, when a murder occurs, the front of the business, residence or other is photographed, not a graphic photo-op of life-giving red fluid emptied into a filthy street.

However, papers now compete with the Internet and must sell and market their guck anyway they can. I emailed the editor and the publisher of this rag and only the editor responded. He claims the decision was carefully thought over and was done to "warn" residents to stay away from uptown Butte bars. OH! thanx, a picture of the bar people are to steer clear of would not have sufficed! Americans are not intelligent enough to figure out that dead is dead, we need a picture now of what it looks like, to hell with this boy's parents and their tragedy....we are in the business of selling papers!!

Apparently, the only newspaper in town can do whatever it wants to do because, well, it's the only paper in town. I asked the principal of one of the Butte schools if he would consider writing a letter to The Standard asking them if they would not publish similar photos in the future and consider how these photos might affect local children who see them(again, not mentioning this young man's parents). He said (without hesitation), "no." Although he said that he agreed that it was tacky, and a very good example of poor decision making, he did not want to suffer any backlash or repercussions from the paper, because it "supports" the schools. In other words, a letter simply pointing out that a photo is inappropriate and asking if the paper would not print similar ones in the future could cause some sort of withdrawal of support from The Standard. Wow. This sort of attitude reminds me of a Clint Eastwood film, remember High Plains Drifter? The towns people are all frightened rabbits hiding away from the evil gang or doing whatever they tell them to do, just so they won't be targeted, degraded, robbed, or worse.

This is the way of small-town newspapers and most thinking people understand this. There is not one Butte resident who I have asked what they thought of that picture in Sunday's paper who didn't shake their head and say, "tacky" "disgusting" "sick" "wrong" Former attorney and political intellecutal, Ann Coulter, has said "For the really insane stuff you have to go to bush-league newspapers where reporters have all the venom of the big-city newspapers, combined with retard-level IQs." (see Godless pg. 119)

As if to pretend that writers and editors at The Standard actually have a heart, a "Standard Opinion" was published in Friday's editorial page. Hah! What a laugh...and then as if to add insult to injury, no mention was made of their tacky "death scene" photo. Just this heartfelt ending, "Last Saturday's killing was a tragedy we won't soon forget. (at least we won't soon forget what 6 litres of blood splattered on a sidewalk looks like)Let's work toward ensuring it's the last such ugly scar on Uptown Butte for years to come."(but really folks, if there is one, and maybe a dismemberment this time, you can be sure our photographer will scurry over there and take a pic from the best possible angle!)