Slusher: The Emanuel Nine and the shortening of small fantasies

We use the name of a man who killed nine people in a church once because we have to. He is a person and has a face and its image is spread across the vast realm of the Internet as well as every other newspaper in the country, and people want to know it. In some measure, they need to know it. But I'm not going to use it here, and I hope you forget it, too.

It is a sad commentary on our times that a newspaper needs a policy on such things, but the Daily Herald has one regarding the perpetrators, or suspects, in mass killings. We strictly limit any publication of their pictures. We use their names only once in a story and henceforth refer to them only broadly.

It is a hard policy to monitor and enforce. Sometimes, the names are everywhere, and in certain cases, as in that of the Boston Marathon bomber, the suspect - as opposed to the victims - becomes so much the focus of the news that ignoring a picture or a name can almost call attention to itself. And it runs contrary to our mission - which is to publish information, not withhold it.

But it is worth the effort. We don't want to contribute any more than we have to to the creation of anti-heroes.

The late author (and Waukegan native) Ray Bradbury described the goal with brutal eloquence in his short story "Downwind from Gettysburg." In the story, a glory-seeking loser named Booth who can think of no other way to acquire fame for himself "kills" a renowned robotic Abraham Lincoln, an exhibit employee's lifetime labor of love.

Why?

"Always wanted to be big, famous, why not? That didn't work either. So, I thought, if you can't find something to be glad about, find something to be sad. Lots of ways to enjoy being sad. Why? Who knows? I just had to find something awful to do and then cry about what I had done. That way you felt you had accomplished something," Booth tells his captor.

The captor, another exhibit employee named Bayes, is moved by the tragic destruction of his friend's passion and the thought of Lincoln suffering the indignity of a second assassination. But he refuses to buy in. He reflects on the assassin's bid for notoriety - and then balks.

"You went to all this trouble? Yes. And I'm mining the game," Bayes says. "For when all is said and done, Mr. Booth, all the reasons listed and all the sums summed, you're a has-been that never was. And you're going to stay that way, spoiled and narcissistic and small and mean and rotten. You're a short man and I intend to squash and squeeze and press and batter you an inch shorter instead of force-growing you, helping you gloat nine feet tall."

Then Bayes lets the assassin go, vowing never to tell the world it was he who had done the crime and promising to kill Booth if he ever breathes a word about it.

In the real world, it is not so easy for a newspaper to force anonymity on dregs like Bradbury's fictional Booth. But if, in an act counter to our prime objective, we can blunt their martyrdom; if a year from now, you can remember the Emanuel Nine but not the sad criminal who murdered them; if you can remember the horror of Sandy Hook Elementary but not who caused it; if locations like Oklahoma City, Virginia Tech, Columbine and, yes, Northern Illinois University stir sympathetic memories of victims but no clear image of the perpetrator, we will take comfort in having played a part in battering a sorry, small fantasy an inch shorter.

Jim Slusher, jslusher@dailyherald.com, is an assistant managing editor at the Daily Herald. Follow him on Facebook at facebook.com/jim.slusher1 and on Twitter at @JimSlusher.