And it has been a while, by gum!
Seems that late Halloween night, some a**hole(s) vandalized the Church of the Resurrection in New Albany, Ohio. While they didn’t make it into the church itself, they still managed to cause a lot of damage to the building and even several vehicles that were parked in the church’s lot.
While one of the vehicles suffered damage from apparently being hit by a “cigarette butt collection container”, the bulk of the vandalism consisted of paint being thrown on the building and an assortment of graffiti being spray painted on the building and vehicles. Most of the graffiti consisted of the word “Trees (slang for marijuana)”, although there were random messages like “F**k God”, “God is dead” and “KYS (‘kill yourself’)”. Lovely.
(BTW, I’m not posting any of the photos of the vandalism here. Don’t want to give these imbeciles any more attention. If you’re dying to see the vandalism, though, NBC4 Columbus has posted them here).
When I watched the original broadcast of this report, I kind of shook my head at this senseless act. It sort of riled me up a bit, too, and I believe I may have even muttered my dad’s classic phrase that I “hope they catch them and string ’em up by their Buster Browns”. But that was nothing compared to my reaction when I read the online version of the article, starting with the headline:
What? “Vandalized with satanic worship”? Where the hell did that come from (pun intended)? And what does that even mean?
If you watch the original news broadcast, available here, you’ll see that several times, reporters point out that the act was more than likely caused by a group of local teens. Police told Candice Lee, who reported the original story, that the damage was “likely the work of Halloween pranksters” and “likely teenagers, up to no good”. In the report, Candice herself refers to the guilty party as “Halloween vandals”.
As far as the graffiti itself being satanic, none of that is even hinted at in the original report. Colleen Marshall introduces the original report by referring to the vandalism as “offensive graffiti (and) even profanity”. In fact, the report only mentions the devil once, although it’s to let him off the hook for this one: “Unlikely the work of the devil, New Albany Police instead believe ghastly ghouls are guilty of desecrating this place of worship.”
So how did all this talk of satanic worship come into play? Well, you could say this is just a simple case of lazy reporting. And it is. But it goes beyond that because the author of the online article went out of their way to insert the phrase “satanic worship” into the piece twice, including the headline. BTW, that headline is my favorite because it doesn’t even make any sense. Seriously, how do you vandalize something with worship, satanic or otherwise?
The author also felt the need to point out that some of the graffiti featured “an upside down cross used in the practice of worshiping Satan.”
Um, OK. Not sure what that means, either, but I get the gist: satan’s disciples are running amuck in New Albany, Ohio.
Here’s my point: if the original new report doesn’t even mention the word “satanic”, why add it to the online version of what’s supposed to be the same report?
Why is this a big deal to me? Well, for starters, I don’t like it when people distort the facts. When it comes to throwing satan in the mix, by and large, “satanic activity” is nothing more than teenagers rebelling against society and trying to piss off and scare people in the process. And once we start doing anything more than arresting these punks and prosecuting them to the fullest extent of the law, we’re silently showing them they have succeeded in their plan. Think about it; can’t you see them out there, laughing, and telling each other “look, they’re all scared! They think we’re a satanic cult!”
Put another way, if Satanists really were planning to “worship” or even send a message, why would they end up doing nothing more than spray painting a couple of obscenities and “upside down crosses” on a church? And while they were at it, I guess they decided to throw in a couple of reference to pot, just to throw us all off the scent, huh?
This sort of irresponsible journalism also ends up impacting the community and, eventually, even their folklore and actual history. Case in point, how many of you over the age of 30 grew up hearing that there was a satanic cult lurking in the woods near your house? Or maybe they were hiding out in an old, abandoned mansion at the end of some lonely road. Now, ask yourselves (and be honest); how many times did those stories turn out to be true? Hell Town, anyone?
So let’s call this incident what it really was: a bunch of morons who need to be tracked down, arrested, and punished severely. But let’s leave Satan out of this one, OK? In case you haven’t picked up a newspaper lately, he’s clearly busy with other things.
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You can read the NBC4 online article in its entirety by clicking here. Link also contains the video of the original, non-satanic broadcast.
