The Frenzy

There's one person walking down the road,

and another person walks up behind this person,

and assaults him.

Then the  police step in.

They find the culprit, and reveal the information

And now people know who the assaulted and the assaulter are.

Then the media steps in. 

It's no longer a story of one person assaulting another.

It's no longer a simple matter of justice. The details seep,

deep into the media, until the assault is less of an issue

than the identities of those two.

Soon we're looking at the situation not through a looking glass,

but through a kaleidoscope. 

It's not one person assaulting another, it's a [insert race] [insert gender]

assaulting [insert race] [insert gender]

The names are no longer important, unless

[insert name associated with religion]

is either one of the two people. 

The frenzy sets in.

Soon the media's aflutter and so are the activists.

And the conspiracy theorists, and from then on,

patterns are being made, and so are associations. 

It's now a matter of what those two were, not who they were.

You have a parade here, a protest there.

Some big news channel's brewing a war out of it.

Even the vigil respects the death: not of a person, 

but of a member of a group.

Something's done in honor of the victim,

And the perpetrator's bad mouthed.

And two weeks later, the situation's the same but with more anger

And the media's done as much as a group of birds on a telephone wire.

If only I could change that. Be the Rorschach, 

look at it as a matter of justice and nothing else.

Not publicize the assaulter so he becomes a 

Rupert Pupkin for a week.