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Charles Blow

Don’t mythologize Christopher Dorner

I do not see a need to explain why people — particularly many on social media — are mythologizing Dorner. Rooting for a suspected killer who makes threats against even more innocent people and their families is just horrendous. It’s not exciting; it’s revolting.

Hill later apologized for his choice of words. I applaud him for doing that.

Still, too many people online have portrayed Dorner’s actions as righteous retribution. But nothing can change the fact that those actions are wrong.

Fighting for justice is noble. Spilling innocent blood is the ultimate act of cowardice. Dorner is not the right emblem for those wronged by the system.

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I’m just happy he did himself in with his bullet and saved taxpayers millions trying to send him to prison!
L

letget on February 16, 2013 at 2:19 PM

Blow: Don’t mythologize Christopher Dorner in the way that you mythologize that obama idiot.

Pork-Chop on February 16, 2013 at 2:27 PM

Hill later apologized for his choice of words.

Yeah, but not for the reprehensible ideas they were used to express.

steebo77 on February 16, 2013 at 2:29 PM

I was going to mythologize Chris Dorner until I read his column.

Said no one.

chimney sweep on February 16, 2013 at 2:30 PM

I was going to applaud Mr. Blow for this column but then I realized that I would be congratulating him for stating that the murderer of innocence people shouldn’t be praised or eulogized.

Pretty pathetic state of affairs if we have to do that.

I didn’t read the comments over at the NY Times. Anyone want to put on their hip boots and wade into it?

SteveMG on February 16, 2013 at 2:32 PM

I didn’t read the comments over at the NY Times. Anyone want to put on their hip boots and wade into it?

SteveMG on February 16, 2013 at 2:32 PM

More reasonable comments than I would have guessed. However, here are some truly execrable excerpts:

Dorner is ‘everyman’ or ‘any man’ pushed to the point that they see no way out except retribution before they die.

Isn’t there a space between condoning or condemning? I almost always admire and feel uplifted by your words, Mr. Blow, but this column smacks too much of the false choices we are daily given. How about the old classic what if you were in his shoes?

What options did he have after losing everything he’d dreamed of since he was a teenager?

Mr. Blow keeps using the term “innocent” to describe the victims of Doerner. Are you certain of that?

To this day no one knows whether Dorner killed the couple.

steebo77 on February 16, 2013 at 2:50 PM

Hill later non-apologized for his choice of words. I applaud him for doing that, because he didn’t really apologize at all.

Edited for accuracy.

Want some fun? Read the NYT Comments.

Del Dolemonte on February 16, 2013 at 2:51 PM

Mr. Blow keeps using the term “innocent” to describe the victims of Doerner. Are you certain of that?

steebo77 on February 16, 2013 at 2:50 PM

Yeah, saw that comment too. You left out the best part, where the idiot claims that the LAPD actually killed the 2 women delivering newspapers in the pickup.

Del Dolemonte on February 16, 2013 at 2:52 PM

Blow is simply smart enough to want to save the old Westside Story “We’re depraved on account of we’re deprived” shtick for future poster children slightly less over the top than this one.

No, I generally don’t click to the NYT, nor would I want to read the comments.

It’s telling that this column is sufficiently novel compared to other efforts of Blow to be considered “newsy.”

Drained Brain on February 16, 2013 at 3:15 PM

I do not see a need to explain why people — particularly many on social media — are mythologizing Dorner.

Oh, yes you do – or you wouldn’t have written this column. You have to warn your comrades off this looniness because you have just enough sense to know how horrible it looks to normal people.

Missy on February 16, 2013 at 3:18 PM

Hill later apologized for his choice of words.

Choice of words, my azz. Maybe choice of ideas, choice of values, choice of world-views, but not choice of words.

petefrt on February 16, 2013 at 3:22 PM

There’s no myth about the psychopath.
Nor is there a myth about his followers who can only be deemed sociopaths for idolizing such a despicable creature.

kregg on February 16, 2013 at 3:41 PM

Well Charles, you continue to support the Fraud-in-Chief, whose bff’s, Bill and Bernadine, thought the lives of 25 million innocent people were expendable for their War on America/Communist revolution. By any means necessary and all that.

Buy Danish on February 16, 2013 at 3:48 PM

He wasn’t a hero, he was an hero.

Sekhmet on February 16, 2013 at 4:04 PM

Blow refuses to acknowledge that Dorner is a byproduct of Democratic Party policy and ideology of the last 50 years.

The victicrat mentality they sow in people’s minds created this monster.

ButterflyDragon on February 16, 2013 at 4:07 PM

Hill later apologized for his choice of words. I applaud him for doing that.

You “applaud” him for that minimal level of pseudo-humanity … and only after the fact, when he realized he had been caught being such a despicable lowlife scumbag? That’s not worthy of applause but contempt. Hill is scum. But, then, this is Charles Blow writing … who is also a contemptible lowlife with a pea-brain. Birds of a feather.

ThePrimordialOrderedPair on February 16, 2013 at 4:27 PM