Here’s a semantic quirk that has bothered me for ages-
Why do important or famous folk get assassinated while the rest of us ordinary schmucks get murdered?
Is it just the motivation behind the act that requires the change in verbage, or is it something else entirely? Dead is dead after all.
It’s political. If a scout troop kills the scoutmaster for the five bucks in his wallet, that’s a murder. If it’s to take over control of the scout den, that’s an assassination.
Dude, you weren’t supposed to say anything. The scout pack is much better off now anyway.
Was John Lennon assassinated or murdered? He wasn’t a political figure, but I generally hear the term “assassinated” associated with the homicidal act of which he was a victim.
Well, we usually call killings of famous people by crazies “assassinations” (because they are being killed as a result of being famous), despite the fact that they are not strictly political killings.
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
Do people really call Lennon’s murder an assassination? That doesn’t sound right. If it were Lenin, maybe, but the single deranged act of a lunatic sounds like run-of-the-mill murder to me, no matter who the victim is.
“Assassinate” is the morally neutral from of “murder”. After all, while murderers are always bad, under certain circumstances assassins can be cool, even admirable. The reason people who kill political figures are generally called assassins is that we as a society realize that such people are usually above or beyond the law, and thus their extrajudicial killing is occasionally necessary. At the same time, killings performed by governments are also seen as assassinations, because the governments purportedly does them for the benefit of their nations - and after all, governments get to kill people in war all the time.
So was Kennedy murdered to you, then, or assassinated?
He was first assasinated, then murdered and then killed in cold blood.
Cetero censeo subcriptio vestri bardus est.
Assassination originally meant to kill by treachery – Thus Julius Caesar was assassinated because it was done by Brutus, a friend. Hiring someone to do it was often part of the deal (say in Macbeth).
The term then migrated to mean “to kill a government leader.”
I don’t think it’s commonly used to mean “to kill a celebrity,” but that would be a logical development.
Here is a previous thread we did on this: Murder vs. Assasination - Factual Questions - Straight Dope Message Board
Google hits:
about 22,300 for “lennon was murdered”
about 71,500 for “lennon was assassinated”
Lennon was not just a celebrity but a countercultural icon. Killing him was assassination because it was seen as a blow aganst what he represented. Same as M.L. King Jr.
Interesting point, Glazer. Maybe we should generalize away from governmental leader towards any sort of leader. That would include Lennon and King, but not mere entertainers or celebs.
Chris Rock used to have a line in his stand-up from the late 90s complaining about black people who spoke of the respective drive-by shootings (and unsolved murders) of the East Coast/West Coast hip-hop rivals Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls as “assassinations”. Malcolm X was assassinated. John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Them niggas just got shot.
If Michelle Obama says “You cheated on me” and shoots him dead, that’s a murder
If Michelle Obama says “You won’t appoint me Secretary of State?” And then shoots him that’s an assasination.
Assasination has a political motive behind it
For a real-life example, how about the attempt on Reagan’s life? John Hinkley didn’t have a political motive; he shot Reagan because he wanted Jodi Foster to pay attention to him. In other words, it was Reagan only because he was important enough for people to notice. Yet had he died it certainly would have been called an assassination, even though Hinkley was only thinking of himself and not of any political ramifications.
I guess I can see your point, perhaps the motive doesn’t have to be political but the motive must be one other than anger.
In Hinkley’s case he wanted a person with the most celebrity, so he had no personal anger against Reagan and Carter would’ve been just as good.
In my example Michelle Obama murdering her husband because he cheated on her, would almost certainly not be called an assasination. But the murder would be done out of anger or revenge.
As for John Lennon the problem with that complicated by the fact Chapman himself has said he really doesn’t understand why he killed Lennon. I’ve read many books and no one can ever give a decent reason why he did it, not even him. It seems in Chapman’s mind the reason he killed Lennon was “It seemed like a good idea at the time.” But the motive behind it changes with Chapman
That’s why I said that Lennon’s death was "seen as "a blow to the counterculture. I think that public perciption is a part of what’s seen as an assassination, as well as the killers motive.
All assassinations are murders, but not all murders are assassinations. I may have heard John Lennon’s murder referred to as an assassination once or twice, but I think that’s carrying it a bit too far, and I loved the guy. But if that really is done in all seriousness by some people, that just goes to show there’s a little bit of gray area. You have Kennedy and Archduke Franz Ferdinand at the assassination end of the scale and the guy working midnight shift at the 7-Eleven at the murder end, and those are pretty clear-cut. Somewhere in the middle, it may get a bit murky.
However, they are all murders.