The Highland Park (Fourth of July) Shooting: A Not So Scary TV Movie
Jerry Bernini
[Editor’s note: What Jerry has done is sketch out how events like this are scripted. Russ Winter has published an excellent analysis from which I have selected several photos (below). It complements the LAW ENFORCEMENT FALSE FLAG / STAGED EVENT CHECKLIST we published a few months ago. Enjoy!]
In 1971, back in the good old analog days, people viewing the big world through their relatively small and heavy television sets watched commercials for Memorex’s new line of blank cassette tapes. The commercials relied upon the slogan “Is it live or is it Memorex?” and featured Ella Fitzgerald singing Morgan Lewis and Nancy Hamilton’s “How High the Moon.” The ads showed (or convinced) viewers that a recording of Fitzgerald’s voice could, in the real world, shatter a wine goblet.
A half century later, thinly disguised long playing infomercials mimicking news , e.g. the virtual plague that began thirty one months ago and the recent Highland Park shooting “event” have been designed to evoke deep emotional responses from viewers and to produce profound changes in the law of this and other lands. Such is “reality” in the year 2022. The zietgeist of this recently launched decade is, apparently, no more than state sponsored hysteria delivered via glowing, hypnotic screens. We are here.
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There were obvious plot problems from the start. There always are. A nearly six foot tall male weighing
one hundred twenty pounds executing a deadly sniper attack is a plot problem. A misfit with a tally mark tattoo on his face who has spent most of his time dressing up for cameras suddenly acting with the violent precision of an assassin, soldier or similar professional killer is another. But (plot problems notwithstanding) it was good enough for the poorly written ongoing movie we call the news. The next shooting event, assuming another is needed to ram through whatever Draconian legislation the most recent wave of fake shootings were designed to provoke, pitch and justify, will undoubtedly be just as badly scripted or worse.
Take a look, as a start, at the actor selected for the starring role in this silly little horror movie. It was just that. It wasn’t the real horror experienced by greater numbers of those who reside on this planet. It wasn’t even a powerful film such as Apocalypse Now depicting horror and starring Marlon Brando actually emoting the words “The horror” and then going home a hundred grand richer for his trouble. No, it was merely a ham-handed ongoing propaganda film, “a cheap appeal,” to quote a certain Canadian poet/songwriter, “to a kind emotional patriotism.”
Forget for a moment the standard poor writing and bad production values of this and other shooting event TV shows and focus for a moment on the mutant young assassin. I can’t be the only mortal who noticed that this lost soul had approximately the physical dimensions of famous non-shooter magical mystery boy Adam Lanza. You remember him, don’t you? He too was an ectomorph like the current white boy rapper turned American sniper. He too morphed suddenly into a supernatural android killing machine.
Decades ago, and I remember decades ago as though yesterday, John Lennon sang of being sick and tired of hearing things from short sighted narrow minded hypocrites. Many of us are likewise sick and tired of poorly produced and badly directed movies that pave the way for future political machinations.
After this latest preposterous movie it occurred to me that someone should provide some dos and don’ts that might be a small but useful step toward better and more plausible work in this relatively new and still developing genre of fiction, i.e., the mass shooting TV show, infomercial and/or miniseries. Please note that this short guide is not intended to insult but to inform. I have no ax to grind (I don’t actually own an ax or weapon of any kind). Like most Americans I just want, more than anything else, more and better entertainment.
Insider, which bills itself as a news outlet, noted, without irony of course, that Highland Park is an affluent suburb of Chicago known for being a backdrop in several 1980s comedy films (and one billed as a comedy/drama): Weird Science, Sixteen Candles, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Risky Business. It’s particularly tragicomic therefore that the Highland Park shooting was not merely a movie pretending to be a real event but a movie pretending to be a real event filmed in a locale that has appeared, on several occasions, in silly and/or entertaining movies. In this recent movie one of the dead was Eduardo Uvaldo, echoing the name of the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas which itself echoed, or was the sequel to, the TV presentation known as the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.
Regarding that event, NBC news recently offered this inadvertently apt headline: “Texas elementary shooting echoes the Sandy Hook massacre. The bloodshed at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, stirs painful memories of one of the defining tragedies of the early 21st century.” That which NBC called a defining tragedy, that piece of bad theater of which the Uvalde movie was a sequel, was analyzed in depth in a book bearing the self-explanatory title “Nobody Died at Sandy Hook.” The book was quickly disappeared by Amazon Inc. and its editor (James Fetzer) owes, according to the Wisconsin court system, a half million or so American dollars to part time professional griever and full time litigator Leonard Posner. A US Supreme Court hearing is pending.
One might think it good news, incidentally, that the seven dead in Highland Park and the twenty one dead in Uvalde are alive and well and have recently become highly productive cash cows. It might be good news for them but it isn’t for us little people, not in the inverted reality called the new now. As Fetzer and many of us have learned, most Americans are offended by the very idea that twenty six and seven-year-olds weren’t blown to little bits by skinny, autistic super-villain kid Adam Lanza. What does this say? I’m fairly certain that I know but I will welcome feedback.
The following, while perhaps not a comprehensive or complete list, fairly represents the template used in TV mass shootings. Call it the eleven commandments of such events. I’m not the first to notice that all were scripted in more or less the same formulaic and infantile manner. I’ve detailed the standard format below and have where needed added some suggested nominal improvements. I don’t claim that any are necessary but have merely made suggestions regarding entertainment value.
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- Arrange for, create, induct, recruit or otherwise fashion a villain. When choosing the shooter du jour simply grab an empty headed often androgenous ne’er-do-well and more or less full time resident of virtual reality who wants to be famous and/or rich. Pick an internet phenomenon (someone who seeks to be or already is one in his own fevered imagination) utterly incapable of actually doing anything in the real world, whether useful, benevolent or violent.
- If he needs to be seen with, filmed toting, photographed holding or in the approximate vicinity of a weapon, find or create pictures showing this. Or find some simpleton who posts such pictures in order to appear edgy or dangerous. Apparently there’s no shortage thereof. It doesn’t matter if he couldn’t afford to purchase the weapon or that it’s an implement of destruction he would never be able to operate or possibly couldn’t lift along with the necessary ammunition he needed for his big adventure and subsequent close-ups in the US and world media. Again, plausibility doesn’t matter in such shows.
- Start fundraisers ASAP for victims/victim families, but start them after the shooting and not before. In this way you will avoid potentially embarrassing time-line mishaps as have occurred in past staged shootings wherein fundraising for the victims preceded the broadcast of the stragedy [sic] of the moment. Of course it’s unlikely that anyone is going to notice such a detail as they trip over each other (especially if they’re politicians of either variet) struggling to be more outraged than thou. But it’s still better to play it safe.
- Add some witnesses who saw, heard or even smelled things they couldn’t possibly have seen, heard or smelled. For example, in this latest event, Rabbi Yosef Schanowitz, owner of North Suburban Lubavitch Chabad, saw the future mini-madman in his own place of worship. He distinctly remembers, but forgot to notify the ever popular ADL, that this menacing skinny person of interest entered the synagogue…during Passover no less. He provided no proof of this claim of course but none was required. It also might endanger national security.
The ADL meanwhile lost little time in creating a post “The Highland Park Shooting: Disinformation, Misinformation and Conspiracy Theories,’” publishing a list of absurd claims that no serious researcher would actually make. In other words, they merely cobbled together a list of strawman positions advanced by exactly zero serious researchers. Like the bad movie that passes as news to gullible viewers, the ADL’s arguments will appear valid only to credulous minds.
- Create (from pure cloth) one or two heroes. All staged events require heroes. Repeat, all staged events require heroes. Who will ever forget Carlos Arredondo of Boston Marathon fame after he ran to the aid of the crisis actors pretending to be blown up and/or hit by shrapnel (one of whom later appeared on the popular Dancing With the Stars TV show). And speaking of heroes, you can get great hero sandwiches in Highland Park from Bob’s Pantry and Deli. Unfortunately waiting times are currently longer than usual as Bob is busy answering questions about his son Bobby Crime-O.
- Break some stuff, glass and such, after the fact so that the locale, in this case a suburban town in Indiana, looks a little war torn. This detail, no matter how clumsily accomplished, adds loads of authenticity to any phony baloney tragic event.
- While you’re spreading stuff far and wide, be sure to pour, spill and/or splatter some red paint in key parts of the location. Fake blood remains nice and bright red and looks cooler on TV than the real stuff.
- Make sure some emergency vehicles (eventually) show up. If they arrive a day or so after the fake emergency, it’s still OK, just so they’re photographed and filmed. Speaking of which, pick one or two highly suspect tragic images and designate them “iconic.” See, for example, the famous picture of children in Newtown, Connecticut known to many forever hence as “the Sandy Hook conga line.” Yes, that’s right: an iconic conga line.
- Don’t fuss over details. It isn’t a “real” movie, after all, it’s just the news. Therefore production values, plausibility and continuity couldn’t be less important. They matter a bit more in actual movies and TV shows from the entertainment industry but apparently not in staged news events. In all fake shootings, bombings and old-fashioned terrorist events, suspension of disbelief is always in effect and will serve admirably.
- Keep in mind that you’re not trying to win Oscars, Emmys or the like. You just want to scare an already frightened population. No matter how poorly written and badly staged the event, they will be sufficiently terrified and malleable. They will do whatever you say.
- Last of all, remember that you can show and tell these credulous folks anything and they will believe it. They gobble this stuff like mental junk food. After a hundred or so fake shootings and other staged events they remain none the wiser. In fact, they grow continually dimmer. Their screens, however, remain bright and alert.
To their credit the shooting event planners here and in every other event remembered, as always, to pre-order crosses, flowers, teddy bears, other stuffed animals, and assorted chachkas for those entirely spontaneous makeshift shrines that always appear like clockwork. As we all know, no shooting event is complete without a makeshift shrine.
Finally, I need to mention an obvious omission. Being a highly trained epistemologist and keen observer, I always look for the missing item, the important detail that should be but isn’t. It’s the hardest detail to notice or imagine. It’s the Sherlock Holmes motif, the dog that didn’t bark when he or she normally would.. In this case the event planners missed a (if not the) key money shot. Where are the pictures of the sniper’s nest? The event planners could have and should have constructed and later photographed a sniper’s nest. I would have made for powerful imagery then and later might become a popular and profitable tourist stop similar in spirit to the Oswald sniper’s nest in the famous Dallas School Book Depository Assassination Museum and Gift Shop.
Although my suggestions and observations are valid, it’s possible they are not now and I suppose never will be deemed necessary by the planners of fake events, past and future, whoever on God’s green earth they are. No one thinks or reasons nowadays. No one uses or applies discernment, that is only a scarce few engage in such behavior and we know who they (the usual suspects) are. As Anatole Broyard long ago wrote or said: “Paranoids are the only ones who notice things anymore.”
If they say anything, if they try to tell you that this event or any other was just another badly made TV movie or miniseries, just utter the magic words “conspiracy theory” while clicking your heels together and saying “There’s No Place Like the New Now.” Any possibility of cognitive dissonance will be aborted and all will remain as it should be: utterly insane, despotic and dystopian. And may God bless Amerika.
Jerry Bernini is a writer, photographer, epistemologist and tutor in northern New Jersey. In that last capacity he seeks to repair the damage done by compulsory schooling.
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