Why does society glorify Bonnie and Clyde, yet hates more recent random shooters?

[Grummgug]

Bonnie and Clyde never killed little children for the fucks of it. They robbed banks and did some serious gangster shit. Sure, they murdered people, but the whole story around those two, their love, the dangerous life they lived.

It's a completely different story to some outcast nerd who snapped and thought it would be cool to kill 10 years olds and to commit suicide right after to aviod his punishment.

Its just completely stunning to me that people would actually delineate between what Bonnie and Clyde did and what more recent mass killers have done. There is no difference. I do not see how robbing banks (this is a good thing?) or a love affair makes them any better.

[poser765]

Its just completely stunning to me that people would actually delineate between what Bonnie and Clyde did and what more recent mass killers have done. There is no difference. I do not see how robbing banks (this is a good thing?) or a love affair makes them any better.

It doesn't make them better...it makes them a better story.

[nimryas]

So you say that because people made a movie about it makes all of society think their celebrities and shit? Since when was a movie produced by the entire society? Ofc people still have to see the movie in order for it to be a succes, but thats more the curiousity of people rather them thinking of mass killers as a celebrity.

[nnelson54]

There's nothing noble, romantic or exciting about a killer that walks into rooms full of unarmed sitting ducks; blows them all away indiscriminately with no reason, provocation or motive; and then turns the gun on himself.

You can't compared the actions of iconic outlaws and criminals to the garbage we see today in the actions of Adam Lanza, Anders Behring Breivik, James Holmes, Jared Loughner or Seung-Hui Cho.

Society doesn't glorify rampage killers. Take a look at the list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rampage_killers

No one there has been romanticized and that list goes back more than 100 years.

There's nothing romantic about robbing banks and trains and murdering innocent people and law enforcement, either.

The question has already been answered correctly, though. It was the time these people came from. There was a lot of resentment to "the man" during the time period that these outlaws did their work in because of the Civil War(even the north resented it. Popular opinion at the time was to just let the Confederacy have their country and stop sending hundreds of thousands of young northerns to their death for a cause they didn't even believe in anyway) in Jesse James' case and the Great Depression and Prohibition in Bonnie and Clyde's case so at the time they were seen as urban heroes sticking it to the Government. It's all a load of bullshit, though, and they were just cowards and murderers.

Not that the Government was any better, in Jesse James' case. A lot of the sympathy for him - at the time - stemmed from the incident where the Pinkertons(contracted by the US Government) straight up murdered his younger brother(who wasn't a member of the gang and had no criminal history) and blew off his mother's arm when they threw grenades(or what passed for them in 1874, anyway) into their house(they didn't even believe that Jesse James was there, they just wanted to show him that they were serious).

[Twoddle]

It doesn't and stop making posts which make assumptions in the question, I'm sick of it.

[nnelson54]

It doesn't and stop making posts which make assumptions in the question, I'm sick of it.

Except it does. I understand being from the UK you may not see everything that the US glorifies, but there is a Bonnie and Clyde festival held every year near where they were killed. It's just stupid.

[Twoddle]

Except it does. I understand being from the UK you may not see everything that the US glorifies, but there is a Bonnie and Clyde festival held every year near where they were killed. It's just stupid.

That has absolutely nothing to do with my point.

[Pfeff]

They were bank robbers, not school shooters. Plus they refused to rob poor people and actually clothed and fed several hundred poor farmers, a la Robin Hood stories

[nnelson54]

That has absolutely nothing to do with my point.

Unless your point and what you said are two completely and utterly different things, yes it does.

---------- Post added 2012-12-16 at 06:04 PM ----------

They were bank robbers, not school shooters. Plus they refused to rob poor people and actually clothed and fed several hundred poor farmers, a la Robin Hood stories

That's just not true at all. Bonnie and Clyde's favored target were small corner stores and gas stations, where they more often than not straight up murdered whoever happened to be working because it was easier than worrying about them identifying them later or giving them trouble during the robbery. They would literally walk in and just straight up shoot the clerk without a word because keeping them alive wasn't worth the hassle.

[Moadar]

Law enforcement was very corrupt back then as well. Anyone that took a shot at "the man" was looked up to.