Everyone Needs to Shut Up About the Westboro Baptist Church

So internet hacktivist group Anonymous has made the Westboro Baptist Church its latest target. Westboro tweeted (!) back, calling Anonymous a group of “cowards” who will only succeed in further promoting the Church’s messages. Meanwhile, everyone else is once again getting up in arms about the evils of the Phelps clan, weighing the Church’s right to free speech versus the right to tragedy victims’ privacy.

Really, I’m sick of reading about Fred Phelps. I shouldn’t even have to make this post, but people haven’t learned their lesson yet so here I am, stating what I assumed was the obvious but apparently is not obvious at all. For the umpteenth time it seems that the news-consuming masses need to register their outrage at this tiny, inbred religious cult; news outlets, for their part, trip over themselves to cover the Church’s doings, as though it’s still newsworthy that Westboro hates gay people and likes to protest soldiers’ funerals. Then people get outraged, and then the media gives more attention to the Church, and it becomes a vicious attention-grabbing cycle that just gets people pissed off for no good reason.

Indeed, there’s no justifiable reason to continue to give the Church’s actions any modicum of attention. The Phelpses are only newsworthy because media outlets make them newsworthy; it’s the journalistic equivalent of dropping whatever you’re doing to placate a tantrum-throwing toddler every time the toddler gets fidgety. As any parents will tell you, toddlers have a tendency to cry about any and every possible inconvenience; like the Westboro Baptist Church, babies lack the communicative skills to more eloquently express their frustrations. Parents sometimes have to be taught that they can’t run into their child’s room every time he or she starts bawling in the middle of the night. The media could use a similar lesson about Westboro; there’s no reason to make a headline out of each of the Church’s picketing efforts, other than the hope of drumming up outraged page views and angry, buzz-increasing comments.

So I’m going to ask you all nicely, one more time: please stop talking about the Westboro Baptist Church. Nothing the church members do is “news” anymore, and there’s nothing to be gained from once again summarizing Fred Phelps’s stance on societal “evils” like homosexuality and, um, everything else. What is there left to say about the Church at this point? The Phelpses has been on their picketing grind for years now, yet every time they announce their next target for protest, media outlets pick up the “story” and give the Church the attention it so desperately seeks. There’s no point to the media coverage anymore.

The best way to “deal with” a group like Westboro Baptist is not to publicize that group’s actions; rather, it’s to ignore the group and all its proclamations. The Phelpses aren’t stupid; they know most people hate what they do. But still, they get a captive audience every time–so why should they stop? As long as people care, they’ll continue to preach their hate. So let’s stop caring, for real this time.

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