Huh?

Reactions to Dzhokhar: Hatred, anger…empathy? — Boston Globe

Photos show him dropping a bomb near the Boston Marathon finish line. He allegedly killed a police officer in cold blood. But while his older brother fit the stereotype of the dangerous extremist — distant, cruel, driven by ideology — 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev had friends. Went to prom. Was considered “a nice guy.”

The dissonance has sent some people deep into fringe territory. There’s a #FreeJahar movement on Twitter and a Facebook group claiming his innocence. But many others, devastated by the bombings, have nonetheless confessed to mixed emotions this week: to wondering how Tsarnaev felt, what he thought, as he cowered in a boat in a Watertown backyard.

Expressing those ideas can be a clumsy thing, as singer Amanda Palmer now admits about her “poem for dzhokhar,” a rambling, widely-slammed free verse about boats, iPhones, and Vietnamese spring rolls. But is empathy different from sympathy? Does it make us hopelessly naive, or simply human?

HT: JWF