PLANK AUGUST 17, 2012
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Yesterday in Pakistan, members of the Taliban stopped three buses full of people, checked their IDs, and slaughtered the 22 Shias onboard. You can read about it here, courtesy of Salman Masood, on page A10 of this morning's New York Times.
If you go to the Times's website right now, however, you will notice that the top story, accompanied by an imposing picture, concerns the Putin regime's sentencing of the three members of the band Pussy Riot to two years in prison. The verdict, perhaps, marks the depressing conclusion to another depressing story out of Russia.
It is also a story that almost everyone who follows the news has read a lot about.
I don’t want to undercut the reporters who have chronicled Russia’s long, miserable record on free speech. Locking up a band for criticizing the president, or the church, is terrible. But I can’t help but think there’s something a little off-kilter in the sheer amount of attention Pussy Riot is getting. The coverage is morphing into the human-rights equivalent of the blanket coverage afforded to the lone white girl who goes missing on a tropical vacation.
Of course, you can’t measure every story by whether it is more or less outrageous than the slaughter of 22 bus passengers who happened to come from the wrong religious sect. But the media frenzy does make me think that for many people in the news business, the story of the band is appealing in large part because of its name and the camera-friendliness of its members–not to mention the celebrity of Pussy Riot defenders like Madonna, Sting, and Paul McCartney.
Brave dissidents get locked up every day, all over the world. And while Pussy Riot is a sad reminder of Putinism’s thuggery, the obsessive focus is starting to feel more prurient than informative.
10 comments
It's the name. If they were called The Three Sisters, nobody (well, not many) would care. How many times can a reporter write "pussy riot" in one story. So juvenile, unlike my email this morning to my friend in Virginia with a copy of the WP article on Virginia wineries, in which I reminded my friend to take his drip dickey with him on his trip to the wineries. Blasphemy by pussy riot in the Orthodox Church reminds me of the couple killed in an auto accident on the way to the Catholic Church to get married. When they appeared before St Peter at the Pearly Gates, they asked if they could get married in heaven. St. Peter said he'd check and get back with them. Three months later St. Peter returned, and the couple asked if they could get divorced in heaven, just in case it didn't work out. Exasperated, St. Peter advised the couple that it took three month to find a priest in heaven, and that it may take years to find a lawyer.
- rayward
August 17, 2012 at 12:58pm
The attention is merited by the illustration of the absurdity of authoritarian regimes that are Western Wannabees. 'Nuff said. Oh, except, yes, "Pussy Riot" definitely helps!
- jacob111
August 17, 2012 at 1:52pm
This may be a dumb question: Is the group's name actually the English phrase "pussy riot" or is it a translation from Russian slang?
- stanmvp48
August 17, 2012 at 2:33pm
Umm .. yes. How can you not want to write about three photogenic young babes who call themselves "Pussy Riot?"
- IowaBeauty
August 17, 2012 at 2:51pm
I think it's not wrong to have the two following opinions: 1. There should be more coverage of international news and human rights abuses. 2. It's not a bad thing that there's been a lot of coverage in this case. In a world where we have day after day of coverage on what Harry Reid knows about Romney's taxes, or will Biden be dumped for Hillary, it really shouldn't have to be an either/or proposition here to cover Pussy Riot and Pakistan.
- Crock1701
August 17, 2012 at 3:38pm
I was going to make the same points as y'all about the name, the beauty and the sexually provocative nature of PR's performances. (Apparently a previous happening of theirs involved group sex in a museum.) At the same time, there are other reasons why the Pussy Riot trial might be a more important story than the Taliban atrocity referenced here. Yes, the targeted killing of twenty people on the basis of their religion is an evil of horrendous proportions and should be documented, and maybe it is news to many of us that the Taliban's list of goals includes the promotion of Suni Islam over Shia Islam, but on other levels the headline "Taliban Kill Twenty Unarmed Civilians in Northwest Pakistan" is sort of static inasmuch as it doesn't change our views either of the Taliban or Pakistan. The Pussy Riot trial OTOH has a lot to teach us about the current state of affairs inside Russia, both about the aggressive character of Putin's authoritarianism and about its limitations and anxiety.
- AaronW
August 17, 2012 at 4:18pm
"Three young punks make Putin blink" certainly has a different spin than this article. Re the import of Pussy Riot vs Pakistani massacre--- Note that Russia and Pakistan are of very different import to world events-- and that the dead in Pakistan were innocent victims. Pussy Rioters went lookin' for trouble. And have left a memorable image of three young female punks in a glass cage. Another memorable image comes to mind of a disheveled chap who went lookin' for trouble in front of a tank near Tiannamen Square. [Better for ray if he had worn a coat and tie??] The primary crime of our times-- and of previous times-- are those multitudes that keep silent and thereby enable unfairness and oppression. I take my heroes (and heroines) wherever and however they may be found. Putin may yet find that that image is more trouble than he bargained for ..but maybe not close to the trouble of three punks imprisoned alive.
- drofnats1
August 17, 2012 at 5:38pm
"There should be more coverage of international news and human rights abuses." I agree, Crock1701. I'd like to see more articles on Russia, where human rights abuses abound. Putin even abuses oligarchs! If you want the Russian take on events in English, try the Moscow Times, where the lead story today is the Pussy Riot prison sentence http://www.themoscowtimes.com/ or the St. Petersburg Times http://www.sptimesrussia.com/ It seems Madonna supports the Pussy Riot, and when she made some pro-gay comments during a St. Petersburg concert on August 9th, she caused a group of religious believers to sue her for $10 million for insulting their religion. Sound familiar? St. Pete has an anti-gay ordinance with fines up to 500,000 rubles for corrupting youth. See story: http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/st-pete-activists-sue-madonna-over-pro-gay-remarks/466772.html
- magboy47.
August 17, 2012 at 6:44pm
@ stanmvp48: Here's a link to the front page of Izvestia: http://izvestia.ru/ In the upper left-hand corner you can see that the name of the group is in fact Pussy Riot--in Roman, not Cyrillic, characters.
- BillW
August 18, 2012 at 8:42am
For the sake of decorum, would it not be better the refer to them as "Vagina Riot"? Or perhaps this will result in a play, "The Pussy Monologues." I don't know about reporters, but I certainly enjoyed typing the above.
- Vogelfam
August 19, 2012 at 11:07am