Lez Keep It Real

Apparently, Paris is.

Sigh.

I’m not all that keen about starting off the week on such a depressing note. After all, it’s Monday. And on Mondays, people need a little boost to get them going, they need a little pat on the back, a smile, perhaps an encouraging word or two that will add a slight kick to their step, Fred Astaire-like, and entice them to get lost in an optimistic montage of expectations that maybe the week won’t be as bad, that maybe Mondays can actually be enjoyable …

But no. I had to go and deliver some crappy news that will not only damper your Monday, but will most likely cast an ominous shadow across the country as a whole for weeks to come.

Case in point: Paris Hilton getting thrown back to the slammer was considered “breaking news” on every major news station as well as every major affiliate. Even the little scroll-thingy sliding every so discretely across the televisions informed you of the Paris situation, which was apparently so essential, that you were kept up-to-date as helicopters circled around her lavish four-bedroom home in the hills to capture the monumental moment.

Meanwhile, another horrific (and undoubtedly more pressing than Paris) incident had taken place as the rest of us sat by, unaware and uniformed. This incident was indeed a crime, a crime of hate actually. But I am beginning to wonder who the real criminal is. Isn’t it the job of the media to inform us of both wrongdoings and of major noteworthy achievements, of opening our eyes to injustice (however brutal), to shed some light on society’s imperfections, and to keep us abreast of the constant occurrence of important factual events? Would it not be a crime to let such things go unreported? If so, then I too am a criminal. Because I failed to inform my readers as well.

Here is my chance at redemption …

Shorty Hall was no Paris Hilton, or Anna Nicole Smith, or Tony Soprano. He wasn’t even a missing white woman. If he had been even close to any of the above, you would have heard of him already, since his beaten and broken body was found on April 22, the victim of a horrific homophobic hate crime wherein he was beaten and tortured for hours before being left in a ditch to die.

Here’s what happened: Hall, 35 and all of 5′4″ and 100 pounds, was allegedly beaten to death by Indiana teens Coleman King, 18, and Garrett Gray, 19. King and Gray confessed to the killing, claiming that it was triggered by Hall having made homosexual advances on them. In Indiana, there is such a thing as a “gay panic” defense — that is to say, a claim of temporary insanity triggered by the so-called horror of being subjected to a homosexual advance.

In this case, that “temporary” insanity would have lasted for hours and hours, during the beating that occurred at Gray’s house, first upstairs, then downstairs, then in the back of a pickup truck en route to a remote spot where they dumped him, first stopping to snap a cellphone pic and send it to a friend. Check it out, dude! The next day they returned to find him dead, where they left him, returning in a few days to collect that body, wrap it in a tarp and store it in Gray’s garage, which also happened to be the garage of his father, the county’s deputy coroner.

This was in APRIL. It is now JUNE. Where has the media been on this? The story has not been a secret in Indiana, nor in the gay community, where it has been circulating with horror. It has been picked up of late blogs, inside and outside Indiana, and now it’s been picked up by Gabriel Rotello here at HuffPo and at Daily Kos. So hopefully it will hit the mainstream soon (CNN, we’re sure ObamaGirl would happily cede some airtime). The question is, why hasn’t it already? Surely the same local wires that transmit the news of a disappeared Kelsey Smith provides notice of a crime such as this? It’s natural for a story to catch fire when one outlet picks it up, and hopefully that is what will happen with this. But it is an example of how many stories like this go unnoticed. The more uncomfortable question to grapple with, it seems, is why.

~ The Huffington Post.

When Paris Hilton becomes the focal point of newscasts, I’m forced to wonder - what has become of our society?

If you’ve had an opportunity to digest this – your opinion is both welcomed and encouraged.

As for me, I’m still at a loss for words …

the huffington post, paris hilton, shorty hall, coleman king, garret gray, hate crime