Are media feeding copycat suicides?

The troubling report in today's Denver Post about a rash of teen suicides in Douglas County strangely says nothing about last week's huge national story on the Florida teenager who took his own life while an audience watched via live webcast. Here's the Nov. 26 Post story. The AP dispatch on Abraham Biggs' self-murder was carried by the Denver Post online and in print beginning Nov. 21.

Copycat suicides, like copycat school shootings, are a well-documented phenomenon of the sick times we live in. Science writer Malcolm Gladwell, for example, discusses the problem in detail in his 2002 best-seller, The Tipping Point.

The Post did not, to my knowledge, carry a still photo of the tragically deranged Biggs, nor did it link to video of him. But if you Google for "Abraham Biggs suicide video," you get more than 54,000 hits. Horrifying.

Some of those are from unedited wildcat websites of the sort that are now ubiquitous and getting more so. Restraint on the part of those new-media actors can only come from internalized moral scruples of decency. Good luck there.

But shouldn't the responsibly edited news outlets such as the cable and broadcast TV networks be expected to hold themselves to a higher standard?

Fox News Channel, for instance, claims some fidelity to traditional values, but when tabloid sensationalism is in the air, they don't seem to resist very well. They didn't on the Biggs story, from what I saw.

What Biggs did is indisputably "news," as are the technology that he used in doing it and the passively curious or in some cases actively macabre reactions of online witnesses. It had to be covered, and analyzed, up to a point.

But news organizations, in helping give the deceased his wish for global fame, have not only coarsened the moral tone of our times. They have also incentivized more such incidents, arguably abetting a number of deaths that need not have occurred.

Our word "obscene" comes from the ancient Greek ethos that recognized certain human emotions or actions as unworthy of portrayal to an audience -- hence confined to occurring off-scene and receiving no more than secondhand description on stage.

This was done in the interest of (1) preserving dignity for all concerned and (2) protecting onlookers from the very real danger of moral contagion. Those obscenity concerns are as valid in modern America as they were in ancient Athens.

Poor Abraham was diagnosed with severe mental illness, but I'll bet what he did was hastened by just such contagion from the culture. Other Abrahams are all around us right now, in Douglas County and everywhere else. You shudder to think what messages they are receiving from the celebrity he's been given. Obscenity rulings from our courts, or enactments from our lawmakers, are too much to hope for in this licentious age. Self-policing by those with the biggest megaphones, perhaps pushed by a revolted and fed-up public, is the best hope I can see.

Tech outreach wooed youth to BHO

What's the campaign doing to attract young voters, I asked a McCain official last month. The look on her face was all I needed to know, but her response made it worse. "The campaign has pretty much given up on reaching out young voters," she said. "They have all pretty much bought in to Obama’s message.” Imagine my shock when I heard this. By that logic, I was voting for Obama. Truly shocking! She went on to lament that young people really believed in the Democrat’s positions on global warming, health care, the war in Iraq, and even the economy. This devout McCain supporter was being very honest and sincere with what she said and what seemed to be the common wisdom within the McCain camp.

It took me a few days to really digest what exactly those sentiments meant and what implications they might have on American politics. If we are to believe that young voters have already “bought in” to the positions of the Democratic Party, the GOP is in much deeper trouble than ever imagined. If the Republicans can't win over the youth on at least one of the most important issues of our time, the future of the party is bleak—better yet—non existent. And the Conservative Movement would be done for too.

Fortunately, I don’t buy it and neither should you. Here is why.

What President-elect Obama’s campaign did (brilliantly, I might add) is talk to young voters in their language: technology. He bridged the digital divide with a vivid and robust campaign largely waged on the internet. He had advertisements on various websites, search engine ad words, blogs, facebook groups, and much more. His online campaign was so well organized that he even sent an email out to thank all of his supporters while he was on his way to make his acceptance speech.

Why does any of this matter? First off, if you are asking that question, you are part of the problem. But it matters because technology is a low cost way to get a targeted message out to a lot of people. His ability to do this not only allowed him to capture a lot of votes and volunteers for walking precincts and such, but it also allowed him to build an unparalleled donor base—made up mostly of small donors. Each one of his email messages went out asking for $5 or $10, an amount even a college student is willing to shell out if she believes in the cause.

Obama’s campaign online, made it very difficult for McCain to make up the difference on the ground because the internet support translated into real world volunteers and real money.

But we can’t blame John McCain or the RNC, there is no way they could have seen this coming. Ha! Howard Dean laid the framework for this type of campaign warfare in 2004 when he was running for President. His fortitude in online fundraising and campaigning is largely the reason he is the Chairman of the DNC. This was a well thought out, well implemented campaign strategy that paid dividends. And it will continue to pay dividends for some time.

For the GOP, the time is now to design, refine and implement. I would say it is catch up time, but catching up is no longer good enough—the party will need to find a way to get ahead of the curve. It is not too hard to do, so online marketing, video content, targeted messaging, and some interesting original content and they are off to a start.

More importantly though, don’t write off the youth. There was one Republican during the primary--dull, uncharismatic, and little quirky—that was able to make inroads with youth voters in droves: Ron Paul. At one point during the campaign season Ron Paul achieved the record for online fundraising (which I believe was later shattered by Barack Obama). Much of Ron Paul’s groundswell of support is easily attributed to a strong internet based campaign that was largely targeted towards youth voters.

And while Ron Paul is not by any stretch of the imagination “in line” with the orthodoxy of the Republican Party, many of his limited government, free market ideas resonated with young voters -- which should at least give a little hope into the willingness of my generation to listen to good arguments.