The Spotlight Deflected If Not Burned Out

I noticed that a comment that was way down in those that I never get around to moderating challenged me to go see the movie "Spotlight" about the Boston Globe team who exposed the sexual abuse of children by priests in the Archdiocese of Boston and elsewhere.    I hadn't seen it, didn't intend to and don't intend to.  As I noted a couple of months back, I've got a severe allergy to the movies dealing with history, not because they can't do it but because they hardly ever make an attempt to get it right.  And, in this case, there is absolutely no reason for me to go see it.  I've been a life-long reader of the Boston Globe as my family have been since back into the 19th century.  I believe I read every one of the Spotlight team's stories on that and other investigations they did, it was some of the best reporting I've ever seen.  I don't need a movie to tell me what it was all about.  Nor is the Boston Globe as it is, today, deserving of the same attention.  Under Brian McGrory and its present ownership, after the pillaging of it under the ownership of the New York Times corp, the glory days of the Globe are long gone.

No, I don't need to see Spotlight, I would doubt it is better than the original it's based on.  That was great reporting.  Great reporting is ever so much better than any movie.

But, since you bring it up, I have to ask where the attention of Hollywood and the newspaper industry is when a far bigger industrial business of child abuse flourishes in plain sight, online, is there to stumble across with the most innocent of web searches.  The images of children being raped by men on Tumblr and other so-called social media sites makes what the Catholic hierarchy ignored pale by comparison, in terms of numbers of children raped and tortured, damaged and destroyed, the viciousness it encourages, the encouragement of incest themed narratives and I'm sure worse is coming, porn always needing to ratchet up the attention getting content.

It was a huge scandal that there were bishops, cardinals and, yes, popes who ignored the evidence that there was a real problem of priests molesting and raping children.  The number of those priests is significant, I've seen a high estimate of 5% of priests who may have been involved with that.  But if it was a scandal for the Catholic hierarchy to ignore it, how much more of a scandal is it for the alleged news media to ignore what's right there in front of them, a web search away.  I doubt that many of them are unaware of the marketing of pedophile porn, sex tourism servicing child rapists and the trafficking in children that has been facilitated by the internet.   Where's the Spotlight team in the media who are going after that multi-billion dollar industry in child rape?  Apparently there's a huge difference when a religious institution can be reported on, especially the Catholic church. Commercial child rape is granted an indulgence by the secular media that doesn't seem to bother much of anyone.   They would, it seems, have been granted permission to peddle the stuff through the same "free speech" "free press" that is another of Hollywood's favorite themes,  as seen in other movies.  I'll bet anyone who seriously challenged them on their acceptance if not participation in the sexual abuse of children would have those slogans thrown at them.

Update:  I decided to experiment with ignoring the boys and bints at Baby Blue and their daddy Duncan, too.  Lent's coming up on February 10, I'm going to get an early start.  I might give in to temptation if they get really ridiculous..