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Rumblings: The Bougie Stranglers

kenzWe know that this is an obtuse and perhaps even meaningless complaint, but here it is: With the facts about The Kensington Strangler revealing that at least some part of his still being at large has something to do with a community so mistreated by police that there’s a culture of actually not reporting rape and violence when it occurs, and him still being at large (a bit of egg on the face of the Phila. Police that it feels like they only got hip to late last week), the news hole around the case is increasingly filled with anything but actual news about the case and the pursuit of the killer. Instead, it’s shit like this:

>>> First up: The Daily Beast! Though you can hardly blame them as a singular editorial entity: Jeff Deeney‘s been driving this train there for a while now. And while we applaud any story that gets the message across that A BIG PART OF WHY THIS IS STILL HAPPENING IS BECAUSE THE POLICE IN THIS PART OF THE CITY ARE DEEMED COMPLETELY UNTRUSTWORTHY, there’s something in Deeney’s coverage (and very much evidenced in the video linked above, which ran last week) that is sensationalistic and bordering on creepy. Yuck.
>>> Round two: Aw, c’mon. Newsworks.org went out an found an “expert” to tell us what anyone who watches Dexter would know: “So now if this person is continuing to do this in this higher risk arena, that would indicate there’s a compulsive nature to it.” No shit, Sherlock.
>>> And the grand finale, Alfred Lubrano’s well-timed and superbly researched “The Drugs Dilemma” in yesterday’s Inky, a part of their “Portrait of Hunger” series. The lede about Philippe Bourgois (actual name), “a University of Pennsylvania anthropologist who lives in the area two or three nights a week to chronicle drug dealing,” couldn’t help but make us cringe a little bit — as if Kensington is somehow a unique civilization under God’s dark sun and this Bourgois fellow is finally going to sort it out — but the story really is packed with information about the size and shape of how Kensington is and has for so long been so very fucked. Meanwhile, they still haven’t caught this piece of shit, but hey: At least it’s all being properly chewed up by people with graduate degrees, right?

This entry was posted on Monday, December 13th, 2010 at 4:16 pm.

  • whdwall

    pretty weak re: phillippe bourgois, doods. a modicum of research would show that he’s a radical motherfucker, not yr average lame-o liberal do-gooder social scientist.
    looking shit up! woooo!
    love,
    your friendly neighborhood marxist penn kid.

    (oh shit, guys–did you notice that ‘bourgois’ is like ‘bourgeois’, but without the letter ‘e’? hey, if we write about that and call him bougie, our self-hating white readership will EAT THAT SHIT UP!)

  • tips

    You read this post, right?

  • steveeboy

    yes man, use the internets to check out bourgois. he wrote a book on puerto rican crack dealers in NYC that was awesome. Can’t wait for the book on the kenzo drug dealers/users to come out.

  • whdwall

    just kinda-sorta:
    my eyes focus on bold words.
    was a not-bad post.

    but, per usual,
    i let myself be misled
    by its whiny tone.

    more, kenzo fucked by
    political econ’my
    not crazy strangler

    haikus are still cool, right?

    anyway, i know you’re just trying to talk about the ‘news hole’ and the way the press is filling it, but dragging bourgois’s name into the inquirer’s stupidity because he agreed to sit for an interview on a subject he has done more work on than most anybody is weak. i’m not totally sure i can tell from the post what you think of bourgois’s work–whether the sentiment you get at with this line: “as if Kensington is somehow a unique civilization under God’s dark sun and this Bourgois fellow is finally going to sort it out” is merely one held by the inky writer or perhaps his readers, or bourgois himself–but the implication seems to be that the research isn’t worth much, especially in the last line. perhaps the implied argument is that systemic analysis of the problems facing oppressed communities is less important than updates on the really scary crazy guy runnin around stranglin people? i really hope that is not your position, it reeks of law and order politics and tendencies toward sensationalism in journalism. i don’t mean to overstate what you were trying to say in the post, but i’m confused at your frustration with the space given to bourgois/people with graduate degrees talking about the drug trade. i didn’t read the inquirer article, but it seemed you thought it was worthy? obviously, a case like this should be top priority and taken seriously; no question there. why does that make a good article about broader problems in kensington a waste of space, called ‘shit like this’?