Conflicting Messages


1190645846The Herald has two stories today about individuals who terrorized Boston. Both have legal problems stemming from their escapades. Yet one article celebrates the child-mauling cause of panic, and the other demands that the woman be kicked out of Boston, despite the fact she never hurt anyone.

The first story is about the growing popularity of Little Joe, the gorilla who escaped the Franklin Park Zoo in 2003, despite the lawsuit the zoo faces from the family of a girl who was mauled by the rampaging animal. The article has a sweet tone, and celebrates the new, escape-proof exhibit for the gorillas:

Crowding six deep, they put their kids by the thick glass and snapped photos of them beside the charismatic simian, as Little Joe struck poses like Rodan’s “The Thinker” and played peek-a-boo with his tusk-like teeth. . . .

Having evolved into a thoughtful finger painter in recent months, Little Joe even tolerated being upstaged by baby girl gorilla Kimani. . . . Visitors say they don’t hold the attack against Little Joe.

Compare this to the treatment Michele McPhee gives Star Simpson, the electronic fashion-loving MIT student, on the next page:

Stop with the sympathy for MIT student Star Simpson. … It cost us, the city taxpayer, when cops have to flood into Fenway Park because a bunch of rich, spoiled hooligans whose mommies and daddies are paying their bills thinks it’s hilarious to set cars ablaze and cause riots… MIT needs to throw Star Simpson off campus because her “crazy ideas” – such as wearing a hoax device at the airport where two of the planes left on that dark morning when 3,000 people were murdered in this country – are unacceptable.

Didn’t it cost taxpayers money when Little Joe escaped from the zoo? Won’t the other animals suffer if Zoo New England loses the civil lawsuit and has to pay the family of the mauled girl damages? The lions might never get a new habitat now.