Adoring a Murderer

A couple of people have called me a Christopher Dorner supporter after my previous post, so I feel the need to clarify: I’m not. While I support the truth, which I suspect Dorner was trying to bring forward, I most definitely do not support murder. My point was to discuss the duality – there’s both good and evil in most people. I wouldn’t blame anyone for disregarding his words following his deeds, but murder doesn’t automatically invalidate every point he was trying to make. Inevitably, that complicates the black and white way we try to look at the world.

Admittedly, I took particular offense to being called Dorner’s #1 fan after going through something similar last month. After Facebook suggested I friend Aurora shooter James Holmes, I made a faux-outraged post on Tumblr. My best guess is that since I had mentioned Holmes’s name in an article I wrote for work a week prior, the scary spying nature of the internet stored that info and figured I “knew him.”

But being accused of knowing Holmes wasn’t the actual disturbing part. It was the response from legitimate Holmes aficionados. A handful of (I think) teenage girls liked/reblogged my post including:

• AgoraphobicHousewife 
• AntiquatedEyes 
• BondSherlockBlond
• RedactedGirl 

Add “.tumblr.com” to the end of each of these handles to see their blogs. I’m not linking to them directly because I don’t want our blogs to synch.

Apparently there’s a whole web community of Holmes fans. Many of them have legitimate crushes on the guy, like he were Justin Bieber or something. Each day, they discuss him, post pictures of him, and pledge undying loyalty to the guy.

I can’t begin to solidify my feelings on this matter. Some of them have some interesting things to say about the way our society demonizes people with mental illness, but I don’t get the leap to worshipping a murderer. Frankly, it’s creepy. I don’t understand it and probably don’t even want to understand it, so in that respect, I can see why people were standoffish at my attitude toward Dorner.

Maybe they, too, are exploring feelings of duality, or rage, or being misunderstood. Or maybe they just find him cute? Above all, I’d just like to give these girls a hug and help them find a better way to harness this passion.