I have to admit that I was surprised when Mr. Mitchell said that there was a lot of sympathy for, and even romanticizing of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev after the Boston Marathon bombings, and that there was that same current of romantic interest in Lee Harvey Oswald after he assassinated JFK. So I decided to look into it a little more.
Tsarnaev has garnered the interest of women young and old, primarily because he is attractive. Despite the evidence that he is a mass-murderer who is interested in violent jihad, women all over the country have seen the prom and graduation pictures that show him as a curly-haired, slightly-smiling kid who looks completely harmless. Young women enamored with Tsarnaev (and the apparent "air of mystery" that he seems to have earned by murdering three people and wounding many more) even set up a site called "Free Jahar" to chat about how he was set up by the government, complain about unflattering mugshots, and "[cluck] maternally over his well-being". Unfortunately, criminals like Tsarnaev often have fan-bases; among the celebrities of the criminal world are Oscar Pistorius (killed girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp) , Ted Bundy (murdered 30 or more young women across the US), and Chris Brown (on trial for assault).Older women have also been on Tsarnaev's side, talking about he didn't know what he was doing, and how he is too young (at 19, he is a legal adult) to be charged with such as serious crime as terrorism.
I couldn't find any information on corresponding fan clubs for Lee Harvey Oswald, but conspiracy theories surround them both. Many of the people on Free Jahar believe that he was framed by the government. This seems very similar to the way that many people believe that the government was really behind the assassination of J.F.K. and that Lee Harvey Oswald was not the sole perpetrator of the crime. It is difficult to think about, since three people were killed and more than 200 were wounded, but perhaps at some point a few decades from now, someone like DeLillo will write a novel about how the government was implicated in the Boston Marathon bombing. At the moment, most of us would be unwilling to absolve Tsarnaev and his brother of any responsibility for the crime, but it is possible that we may end up contemplating the involvement of others in future. I don't know whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, but it is an interesting phenomenon.
I haven't looked lately, but last time I taught _Libra_ I did come across a personal web page devoted to what a "hottie" Oswald was--including a shirtless picture of him on the beach with his buddies in Minsk, which was duly swooned over. I'd try to find the link, but I swore to myself that I'm going to limit my JFK-related Internet trolling this time around and try to just focus on the novel. (Maybe try Googling "Oswald" and "hottie"?)
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