among examples like the great satanism panic of the 1980s and the 2009 Toyota “unintended acceleration”-inspired recalls, Jack O’Brien and Jason Pargin discussed a rather unbelievable addendum to their list of moral panics: the “cannibalism” of Jeffrey Dahmer. go to 21m:10s in the podcast to hear what Jack O’Brien’s theory is.
and it’s a rather convincing one at first. the sort of moral message that this episode is trying to get across is neatly packaged by Jason Pargin near the end, where he suggests that you should “take a few minutes — because with the Internet it’s easy — take a few minutes and just trace it back and see if you can figure out where it originated from, get the raw stats” (at 51m:20s). the episode promotes a heightened sense of skepticism and suggests a little investigative journalism vis-a-vis google for the media hypes that occasionally stream up to national recognition.
and that is really solid advice. solid, solid advice. but they got the Dahmer thing wrong. and i know this is a minor point. i’m not trying to go on a crusade to exonerate this guy as O’Brien and Pargin joked in the podcast.
this was an episode exposing moral panics and advocating for people to ask for the evidence for extraordinary claims. that Dahmer was not a cannibal or did not deserve his "Milwaukee Cannibal" assumed name was certainly an extraordinary claim. luckily, YouTube has a treasure trove of primary sources on this topic.
here's the video:
it starts right where Dahmer himself says he committed cannibalistic acts. there are other media interviews that feature him saying the same thing. and these claims are double corroborated by what Dahmer told the various forensic psychiatrists that spent over a dozen hours interviewing him.
you can watch an hour and a half worth of the court case and listen to the forensic psychiatrist's testimony here:
but the most damning pieces of evidence against O'Brien's claim that Dahmer wasn't a cannibal is simply the primary source that are the crime scene photos. we can talk about heads, body parts, genitalia being stored in fridges, mutilated corpses, skulls with drill holes in them all we want, but until we see the visceral carnage of them there isn't that carnal and terrifying realization of what actually happened. simply use some common-sense search terms on google images to see what i'm talking about.
so, yeah, love you O'Brien and i totally respect you for including some Run the Jewels on this episode, but man, take Pargin's advice next time and do some google searching. it's easy.
