Regarding Marie Cocco’s Jan. 13 column, “Who is to blame for Charles Bishop’s teen-age choices?”: If I were teaching journalism, I would use the column as an example. The topic would be, “How to knock out a quick, apparently profound article without too much thought, and take the rest of the day off.”
Here’s how: 1. Pick something that’s already been sensationalized by the press. It doesn’t matter if it has any real significance to society. 2. Pick another equally tragic and bizarre incident and draw some kind of connection between the two. A superficial connection is sufficient. 3. Insinuate that the two incidents comprise some kind of trend. Imply a national crisis. 4. Take the rest of the day off knowing your work will get a knee-jerk, emotional reaction from lots of people.
What was the subject of Cocco’s column? Teen-age suicide? Aviation? Boats? I’m confused. Did you know that about 5,000 teen-agers committed suicide last year? That’s significant. I don’t have the statistics on how they did it, but I’ll bet a paycheck that aviation, 50-caliber sniper rifles and power boats were among the very rarest categories.
Jessica Dubroff was not a teen-ager when she died, was not attempting suicide, and was not the pilot of the airplane she was in (either legally or in fact). She was also not “half-boy, half-man.” What’s the connection?
I can’t discern either a solid conclusion or a proposal in this article. Is Cocco proposing that we extend the “half-man, half-boy nether world” for another five or 10 years? Would it be better to have 25-year-olds learning to deal with responsibility rather than 15-year-olds?
There are thousands of teen-agers, (boys and girls actually), learning responsibility and self-confidence – and sometimes beginning careers – through flight training. For a flight student to deliberately fly into an office building (or anything else), is extremely rare. Come to think of it, this is the first time I’ve ever heard of it. Still, it makes good media fodder.
One more thing. Ms Cocco implies possible blame on the part of the military for being “unaware a teen-ager had flown a plane into a Tampa office building until after it hit.” Think about that line for a moment.
Everett
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