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Where Rutgers’ student paper The Daily Targum leaves off, the New York Post‘s Andrew Peyser picks up. The Targum ran editorials and student columns lambasting the media for turning Tyler Clementi’s death into some spectacle for gay rights. And guess who also hates anyone with a byline who did the same? The gay-hating Ms. Peyser.
It’s doubtful that Tyler Clementi, the student who jumped to his death from the George Washington Bridge, would want to be named in the same breath as the would-be Latin Kings Goonies gang banger who suffered a horrific assault.
Clementi killed himself after videotape was streamed on the Internet, allegedly by his roommate, of the Rutgers freshman in a gay embrace. The gangster wannabe was sodomized after members of the Kings discovered he might be gay.
The guilty should be punished, absolutely. But it cheapens Clementi’s memory to put him in the same league as a potentially vicious gangster.
Because people terrorizing other people because of their sexuality should never be in the same Venn Diagram. It’s just like when the Targum insisted,
How about we take this to the next level?
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The death of University student Tyler Clementi might have been properly mourned if it were not for the massive rallies and aggressive news coverage that altered the nature of the situation. The truth is that an 18-year-old boy killed himself – he was a student just like the rest of us, someone just trying to receive an education. Yet people’s relentless agendas took his death and turned it into a cause based on false pretenses.
[…] It is disappointing that everyone from news to celebrities picked up the story. Actress Brittany Snow and actor Neil Patrick-Harris are just two of the many celebrities belittling Clementi’s death – forcing his remembrance into a cause rather than a proper mourning.
We did not know Tyler. It was barely three weeks into his first year at the University, and most of his neighbors in his residence hall barely knew him. Turning his death into a push for gay rights is a fallacy. Homosexuality is not the only reason for which people kill themselves. In this case, it might have pushed Clementi over the edge, but the fact that he was gay should by no means turn his death into a march for safe spaces. These groups want to be heard. They want the attention. They want their agendas to shine in the limelight.
The media: The new Latin King Goonies.
