Michael Bronski
The
first wave of the attack came swift and strong. Jonah Goldberg, in his column
titled "When the Show is on the Other Foot" in the National Review
wrote on October 25:
"Who
is Jesse Dirkhising? Well, you wouldn’t know it from the press, but he was a
thirteen-year-old Arkansas boy who was horribly raped and tortured over a
two-day period about a month ago. He was tied up by two homosexual
"lovers" who stuffed Jesse’s mouth with his own underwear, wrapped the
gag with duct tape, tied him to the bed, and then repeatedly sodomized him in
various ways. The boy eventually died from asphyxiation while the murderers were
making a sandwich in the kitchen."
Great
beginning, and then Goldberg gets to his point: "Where is the outrage we
had over Matthew Shepard? Indeed, why does the horrible murder of one gay man
warrant thousands of hours of news and millions of gallons of ink while the
snuffing of this child by two gay men warrants a few local wire reports and the
angry shouts of a few radio hosts? It seems clear that, at least at some level,
the media doesn’t want to report on this story because the perpetrators are gay.
If this had been two white men with a black child; if this had been two straight
men torturing a gay teen; if this had been Christians brutalizing a Jewish
kid…"
Before
we go any further Goldberg’s basic premise is wrong. The story was well reported
in news outlets across the country, albeit as a local murder. It has never been
established that the men accused are "homosexual" never mind lovers,
and since there has been no trial no one has been convicted; one of the men
claims not to have even been at home at the time. So Goldberg’s inflammatory
language and charges are a smokescreen for other not-so-hidden agendas.
On
the face of it Goldberg’s column was a plea for "fair" news coverage –
if homosexual "victims" get front page publicity, why not homosexual
"perpetrators." Of, course on the most simplistic and obvious level
Goldberg’s basic contention is just plain out wrong: Andrew Cunanan and Jeffrey
Dahmer are now household words. But that is not really his point, and Goldberg
is aiming at larger targets. By juxtaposing Dirkhising’s murder with Shepard’s
he is attempting to undercut the attention that the later has drawn to
homophobic violence in our society. Clearly Matthew Shephard’s murder galvanized
a national discussion about anti-gay violence in a way that no other case had up
until that point.
Of
course the irony here is that Goldberg is attempting to draw attention to
violence against children committed by homosexuals, when the reality is that,
overwhelming, this is committed by heterosexuals within the confines of the
biological or extended family. But because the mythos of the gay man as child
molester is so entrenched in the popular imagination Goldberg can easily draw
upon it. Equally ironic is his use of the image "if this had been
Christians brutalizing a Jewish kid…" for it calls up — in reversal —
the centuries old charge of Jews ritually killing and sexually mutilating
Christian children.
How
effective has Goldberg’s attack on gay media visibility been? His first strike
led to several waves of commentary and subsequent attacks. Both Time and The
Washington Post have felt obliged to write long editorials on why they did not
cover the Dirkhising murder in depth. Both pieces were thoughtful, informative,
and nuanced but neither reached, or convinced, the conservative readership at
whom Goldberg’s original piece was aimed. Other conservative columnists have
repeated Goldberg’s charges – a syndicated newspaper column by Brent Bozell was
subtitled "In contrast to the well-covered Matthew Shepard tragedy, this
brutal child-slaying by gays got the silent treatment." Other right-wing
columnists have written similar pieces. The Washington Times has run repeated
stories, and the story has been well-featured on most conservative talk radio
shows. The Dirkhising case has become a cause celebre for conservative letter
writers who – at the urging of the columnists – have deluged newspapers and
magazines with letters and e-mails demanding to know why the story of
Dirkhising’s death has been suppressed by the liberal media. (Apparently it is
now homosexuals, not Jews who own the media.)
In
essence, Goldberg’s column was an organizing tool giving conservatives a
hot-ticket issue around which they could attack the mainstream media for its
"liberal bias" while simultaneously attacking the idea of homosexuals
as "victims" and promoting the concept of gay men as murderous child
molesters. The Jesse Dirkhising story has no lasting and startling political
content – alas, children and teens are murdered all the time to hardly much
notice at all – but as a rallying call for a conservative, anti-gay, and
anti-progressive agenda it has been quite effective. It has been six weeks since
Goldberg’s article appeared and the story continues to grow. Weekly more and
more newspapers across the country are printing letters from people demanding to
know why there has been a "blackout" on the story, or even editorials
about why the correlations between Dirkhising and Shepard are false. Goldberg’s
instinct was to transform the Dirkhising story from a local news story of murder
into a media event with important political overtones — and so far it is
working.