Outrage over outrage is the new outrage. Journalistic umbrage has been churning since long before the sinking of the Maine sent Joseph Pulitzer into war-mongering hysterics. But social media has accelerated the cycle of denunciation and backlash. The relentless grind tends to flatten out the distinction between the trivial and the significant.
Perhaps the most disturbing consequence of constant outrage is that, over time, one incident bleeds into the next. Unvaried incredulity turns into white noise, a meaningless hum. We remember that we were angry — but not why.
Here’s a brief look back at a year in outrage.
In February, Ava DuVernay’s “Selma” failed to win the Academy Award for best picture on a night when all of the 20 major actor nominations went to white performers. The monochromatic selections led blogger and lawyer April Reign to coin the hashtag .Oscarssowhite, prompting tens of thousands of tweets.
In March, Trevor Noah was named as the next “Daily Show” host. Seconds later, the Internet turned up old tweets in which he made dumb jokes about less-than-perfectly-slender women and Jews. There was outrage, and outrage at the outrage, which has now largely faded into mild irritation that Noah’s “Daily Show” is not very funny.
In April, Freddie Gray, an African-American, was injured in a Baltimore police van. He later died from spinal cord injuries. Gray’s death led to extended protests, some of which turned violent — prompting condemnation of the Black Lives Matter movement.
In August, the outrage vortex that calls itself Donald Trump was outraged that reporter Megyn Kelly asked him hard questions during a Fox News debate. Trump said Kelly had been mean to him because she had “blood coming out of her whatever.” People were outraged, but outrage only made Trump stronger.
In September, Monica Foy, a student at Sam Houston State University, wrote an insensitive tweet to her 20 followers about the shooting of a police officer. Right-wing tabloid Breitbart.com was outraged, and wrote a post denouncing her — leading to a firestorm of harassment, including rape and death threats.
In November, a fight over Halloween at Yale extended beyond campus. The controversy erupted because administrators sent a memo advising students not to wear racially insensitive costumes; then a lecturer questioned the need for the memo; next, students denounced the lecturer.
In December, Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, opened fire at a party in San Bernardino, Calif., killing 14. The incident sparked outrage about gun violence, backlash outrage over gun control, outrage over Muslim violence and backlash outrage over Islamophobia.
Looking back, some of this outrage seems overblown or actively harmful — inciting death threats against a college student for an errant tweet is an exercise in cruelty and bullying, not a blow for righteousness.
In other cases, outrage was necessary. Until the Black Lives Matter movement, incidents of police brutality were largely dismissed in the mainstream as accidents devoid of broader meaning.
Without outrage, it’s hard to see systemic problems, much less work toward solutions.
Democracy depends on the belief that normal people, going about their business, are outraged when they see injustice, and want to change it.
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