On the front page of Wednesday's Tennessean, a headline astonished not just a city, but a nation. "2-Pound Dog Used for Deadly Place Kick."
Gizmo, a 17-year-old miniature Yorkshire terrier, had been kicked into the air like a football and died of his injuries. A Priest Lake man was arrested and charged with animal cruelty.
On Thursday, the narrative gained speed. "Dog's death outrages pet lovers," the front-page headline read. The paper reported that page views of the story on the newspaper's Web site totaled 168,135—about 30 to 40 times the average number. On Friday, with coverage throttling higher, the suspect's grandfather offered a nonspecific defense of his grandson. The following day, the velocity of the story at full warp speed, the headline read, "Dog's death taps deep well of emotions." The story added that readers of the Gizmo stories on the Web site had by that point climbed to nearly a quarter of a million. Gizmo, it appeared, would know no end.
At a very elementary level, the massive amount of ink given to Gizmo is very sound news judgment: If it's something people want to read, then, by God, run it. After that, run it again.
But what is it about the Gizmo story that draws readers? We've been knocking that question around for several days now, and the answers are many. For starters, people love dogs; they're man's best friend. Gizmo himself was a lovely, cuddly, 32-ounce ball of fur. Then there was the football kick itself, which led to the dog's death. That was an utterly bizarre angle to the story. And as if that weren't enough, there was a decidedly moral tale to it all: the clear presence of evil, the eyewitness glimpse of horror, the encounter between something terrible and something virtuous. In this case, evil triumphed.
We at the Scene were, of course, troubled by Gizmo's killing. As one of us remarked around the water cooler last week, "A person who will do this to a dog will one day do this to a person." There are, of course, reams of data to suggest this is true. Many serial killers, after all, tortured animals before they graduated to people. Naturally, prosecutors and law enforcement should pursue the case with all they've got. And we trust they will.
Besides being troubled by the incident, we were perplexed by the public's reaction. In no particular order, we asked ourselves: Why do people rush to the assistance of Gizmo when they routinely drive past abandoned, starving and sick animals any other day of the week with no thought about helping them? Is the sentimental outpouring of concern for Gizmo good in and of itself? Can it be turned to productive use? And why do we pay attention to Gizmo and not to the deaths of people like George M. Sutherland?
On the fourth consecutive day of The Tennessean's Gizmo coverage, this item ran relatively unnoticed a few short pages away. Just four paragraphs long, and with the headline "Man dies of injuries in shooting at Settle Court," the story read: "Metro police last night were following several leads in the shooting death of a Nashville man outside 300 Settle Court Wednesday. George M. Sutherland, 26, of Third Avenue North, died yesterday from gunshot wounds he suffered late Wednesday night, police spokesman Don Aaron said."
Jonathan Lamb, the Mellon professor of humanities in Vanderbilt's English Department, has studied animals in literature for some time. He's also an expert in "consciousness studies," which investigate whether it's possible to feel like a dog, or a horse or any other animal. "It's because of the consequences" that we tend to feel more compassion for the Gizmos than for the Sutherlands of the world, he advises. "When an animal dies, you can sentimentalize its death, and leave it at that. That's where it ends. But with the killing in the projects, it requires consequences—it requires some kind of action to acknowledge the loss of life. That's why people want to deemphasize it, because it costs energy. But it requires little energy to mourn a dead dog."
Indeed. If people who mourned the loss of Gizmo were also to mourn the loss of George M. Sutherland, something possibly cataclysmic would happen. But they don't mourn Mr. Sutherland.
We have one suggestion for those of us who read the Gizmo stories and were saddened by them. If they made you angry, upset or vengeful, do something. Respond. Act. Get involved. Rather than read another regurgitated story about his killing and wallow in another emotional upheaval, go save a dog. Volunteer at the pound. Plant a tree. Collect the litter from off the riverbank. Go to the mission and feed someone.
Better yet, and we challenge you, go read a story about another routine killing in the city's housing projects and try to figure out the discrepancy between your response to Gizmo and your response to the killing of a human being. Once you've thought that through, we hope you do something.
