Virginia vs. Iraq

[innerSpaceman]

I am very saddened by the tragic events yesterday in Virginia. But I am appalled that I am presumed (by the media) to be falling all over myself with grief because 33 people were murdered IN AMERICA ... while the same media has all but given up on covering the daily murder rate in Iraq.

300 people were killed in Iraq over last weekend ... 10 times the number killed in Virginia. The weekend death toll in Iraq was on the high side, but not anything out of the ordinary for that country, roughly the size of Virginia. The place is a blood bath.


Yet, because I am an American, I'm somehow supposed to feel more sympathy for Americans.

Fvck that!


I'm as far away from Virginia as Virginia is from the middle east. There is nothing "local" about the Virginia Tech slayings that might affect me more than the tale of killings halfway across the world. And yet, because we somehow share a nation, we are supposed to grieve more for the victims of the college massacre in America than for the victims of daily atrocities in the war of aggression America started on foreign soil.


I hate to give "value points" to horrible killings and grief. But I have zero to do with some madman killer in Virginia, and too much to do with an American war machine that I am forced (as recently as 2 days ago) to support with my own hard-earned money.

:(




.

[BDBopper]

I definitely feel your frustration. However, why do you trust the media to tell you what to do, how to act, what to feel? I've known for a long time that the best person to do that for me is my own self. In both situations my heart tells me to feel grief and anguish. Neither situation is more important than the other. Granted I believe the exact opposite and feel the media tries to manipulate the oppsoite way according to my views. However all that matters is what You tell yourself to feel, act, say, and do. And if you know that than you have won the battle.

[flippyshark]

I guess it's a bit easier (for many) to relate to the victims in Virginia, if only because most of us know what American college campuses are like, what being a student in one is like, even perhaps what being a professor in one is like. I have an easier time imagining it's me in that terrible situation. On the other hand, the life of an Iraqi living in Bagdad or Tikrit, facing such threats day in and day out, is much further from the life experience of most of us here, so, easier to keep in the abstract.

But, you're right, that's a terrible imbalance. The one situation shouldn't diminish our horror and outrage at the other. If we could somehow gain a better sense of what life is like for these people, gain a gut level empathy with them, it would surely make a difference. Right now, it takes considerable effort just to learn the most basic facts about those who live in Iraq. They are very much "other." I hardly watch any television at all, so I don't know if much or any effort has been expended to present the citizens of that occupied territory as real people.

I guess my reactions to these two things differ in their emotional quality (can't do much about that) but objectively, one situation is now finished and can't be changed (though we can make efforts to prevent it happening again). The other situation is ongoing, continually atrocious, and presumably correctable. (Though opinion varies on how that will be achieved.) No answers here, but I appreciate the perspective, iSm.

[Ghoulish Delight]

The victims (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18143312/page/3/)

Liviu Librescu, 76, an engineering science and mechanics lecturer. Born in Romania, he survived the Nazi Holocaust and emigrated to Israel in 1978 before moving to Virginia in 1985.An Israeli citizen, he had taught at Virginia ech for 20 years and was internationally known for his work in aeronautical engineering.

"His research has enabled better aircraft, superior composite materials, and more robust aerospace structures," said Ishwar Puri, the head of the engineering science and mechanics department.


After surviving the Nazi killings, Librescu escaped from Communist Romania and made his way to the United States before he was killed in Monday’s massacre, which coincided with Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Librescu's son, Joe, said his father's students sent e-mails detailing how the professor saved their lives by blocking the doorway of his classroom from the approaching gunman before he was fatally shot.
“My father blocked the doorway with his body and asked the students to flee,” Joe Librescu said from his home outside of Tel Aviv. “Students started opening windows and jumping out.”

[Alex]

And if mass shooting on American college campuses happened every day in a couple months there'd hardly be any coverage.

It is an inherent bias in the news. No matter how overwhelmingly significant something is, if it happens too regularly it will not be covered in proportion.

[lizziebith]

Grief? That's for my beloved oldest aunt who is quickly succumbing to a rare cancer. For strangers in my country and abroad, who are dying in large numbers and small, I have: a diffuse sadness, some horror, and a little shame that I can't care more. I can live with it though, and nobody can insist I grieve more. At least nobody who expects actual results from said insistence.

[Ghoulish Delight]

By the way, I didn't post the story above to ply sympathy into anyone. I just posted it as a counterpoint to the OP. To me, that man's story reminds me that there is absolutely no scale on which one can make a value judgment between senseless deaths.

[innerSpaceman]

My scale comparison was simply about the media, and not about the deaths themselves.

As inspiring as that story was, GD, his life and death has no more or less value than the unknown young student who had little chance to achieve much of anything in life. No more or less value than the Iraqi peasants we have a hard time identifying with. Each death is tragic, and an unbearable loss for someone.


We see the irony of the holocaust survivor being killed senslessly by a lunatic, and we can perceive something terrible in that. We see, as flippyshark pointed out, American college students murdered - - and we can identify something familiar in that.

I suppose it's just human nature to focus on what we can perceive patterns in. But the mass media doesn't help us to look beyond that, and I feel it is failing us all in that respect.

[mousepod]

I remember taking a journalism class with Edwin Diamond back in '84. On the first day of class he presented us with a formula derived from several years of New York Times front page stories. I wish I had my class notes handy, but it went something like: one dead white girl midtown = 5 dead African-Americans uptown = a dozen dead out of state = etc etc....
(If I can find the specific formula, I'll edit the post...).

[Alex]

Part of the problem with media coverage can also be seen in this tease that played Monday night on one of the local channels here. It started with a brief description of things like "32 people killed in America's worse mass shooting ever..." and ended with "...and the possible Bay Area connection to this tragedy at 11."

The media generally, in my view, equates situational similarity with empathy. You will feel it more and be more interested if somehow you are put in the shoes of the people to which it happened. It is hard to say "you, your family, or your friends could be a random ethnic murder in Iraq" but it is easy to say "you, your family, or your friends could be massacred in an American gathering place."

It also helps to be able to produce a huge volume of video in which distraught people are speaking the same language as the listener.

[innerSpaceman]

Hence why I consider it pandering.



And at the most inappropriate of times.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Hence why I consider it pandering.



And at the most inappropriate of times.Without a doubt. I almost threw something at my TV when I absentmindedly left KCAL 9 news on after a Dodger game on Monday. Virginia Tech was of course the top story. Immediately after the 30 seconds of actual reporting on the facts, the very next thing was, "Being only 18 miles from our nation's capital, this tragedy reverberated through Washington DC. Let's turn to our analyst to discuss the political ramifications of today's events." Disgusting.

So I'm right there with you on that. I just don't buy into conflating it with any feelings about the reporting in Iraq, beyond my overall distaste for new reporting.

[blueerica]

Newspapers, news websites, radio and television are all businesses. There are an extreme few that aren't... but even they are, to an extent. They're there to attract attention, get clicks, have people looking at their pages, listening to and watching their commercials. The more they can get to "hang on" through the commercial, the more money they make. As altruistic as any of them want to be, as any individual may be, ends need to be met and few will work for free.

So, I try to impose no moral judgment on it. They have a business to run, and I recognize it for what it is. It's my job to sort it out - and it's my duty to friends and family to help keep their minds open to other possibilities, what isn't being said and to always learn for oneself.

[Strangler Lewis]

What happened in Virginia Tech is more horrifying to most people than what happens in Iraq, Rwanda, etc. not because we value young white southern lives more than young brown African lives but for the different--yet somewhat related--reason that Choi's act appears to be a horrible, arbitrary violation of the social contract.

In America, we live under the belief that we have tamed killing for the sheer pleasure of killing and we are confident that no one will run us over in the crosswalk because it amuses them to do so, and we fear what would happen if those internal checks disappeared on a mass scale. By contrast, we believe that the Iraqi and Rwandan factions have no social fabric to tear, that life is cheap over there and that the victims of these atrocities would happily be on the power end of the bomb or machete if given half a chance.

It's the same view that inspires the "fine, let them all kill each other" sentiment regarding American gang violence.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

Another tragedy is that acting like this actually makes money for the media. I would ask the question of who, exactly, enjoys watching reporting like this, but I've seen that glow in the eyes of my coworkers as they describe how the nightly news dissected some horrible event.

[innerSpaceman]

Ratings for news have been thru the roof since this started.


Sometimes Americans sicken me.

[Alex]

I haven't done my part. Since it happened my total consumption of televised news about it has been about 40 minutes (30 minutes of that while eating lunch in a room with the TV on).

Haven't even read much about it online.

To be harshly honest, I'm not even all that upset about it. It is just so random as to be emotionally meaningless unless I'm directly impacted. Like 33 people dying in a small plane crash or in an earthquake. I've noted it, it'll be stored away, and I've moved on.

[innerSpaceman]

I haven't watched a minute of it ... and didn't click on any more details than what my internet home page showed me.


But I did look with interest at a co-workers computer today, displaying photo after photo of Cho posing with guns, knives and - in one particularly gruesome photo - a hammer. Weirdass stuff. I couldn't help but be fascinated and disgusted.

[Not Afraid]

For me, I have a strange fascination for crazy people. I always want to know why they snapped. In this case, I wanted to know who he was and why he might've ended up doing something so terrible.

The resulting deaths are just as tragic as death due to war but the unexpected nature of them gives them a fascinating edge. Everyone knows that war will end in a certain amount of deaths. Going to school does not have the same reputation.

[scaeagles]

I wonder if CBS, Fox, and ABC are upset because NBC was the recipient of the mailing from the shooter. Seriously.

There is always competition to have "the angle" on a story. As Alex said, his local news can't just cover the story, they have to have their angle on it...a Bay Area connection.

There will be the obligatory calls for more gun control, the mental facility (and doctor who performed the psychiatric evaluation) he was ordered to will be brought under scrutiny as to what blame they may bear....it will have a life as a story until the next major story comes along. The Imus story wasn't done with its run yet, as that had become about how Oprah was going to lead the healing.

I suppose I somewhat agree with Strangler, but I have the opposite reaction that he describes. I am more sickened by the systematic killing in a Rwanda than I am a random act in Virginia. While both are tragic, 800,000 deaths is simply something I cannot comprehend. I suppose that is why there is not more coverage of that...it is impossible to relate to, and as an American I wonder what there is that can be done about it or other situations like it. It is too....overwhelming.

There is no debating Saddam was responsible for some 300,000 deaths. Yet something is done about it, and the situation is regarded as worse than before (I would use the term different rather than better or worse). When an effort was made to feed starving thousands in Somalia, the local warlords didn't want their control of food (and therefore the populace) lost, so even that humanitarian effort was met with opposition that we were unwilling to meet head on.

So I suppose the news, and Americans in general, don't want to hear about something that they can't do anything about. Perhaps a large portion of the population believes that there is something that they can do to prevent something like the VA Tech incident from happening again....but what can they do about a Rwanda, or even an Iraq at this point? Even the elections have seen the dems get their share of anti war anger for refusing to defund the war in Iraq.

Americans don't want to hear about horrible things that they feel powerless to resolve. Not many Americans understand true hardship, and even fewer can comprehend genocide beyond the meaning of the word. I don't think it is that we don't care about those people and situation,s I think it is that we simply can't comprehend them.

[innerSpaceman]

There is no debating Saddam was responsible for some 300,000 deaths. Yet something is done about it, and the situation is regarded as worse than before (I would use the term different rather than better or worse).
Heheh, different as in 650,000 civilian deaths since the U.S. occupation? Different as in the equivalent of the Virginia Tech deaths every few hours?

Maybe you're right about the incomprehensibility of large casualty numbers. But I remain convinced the Virginia Tech interest and coverage is all about nationalism. I think there would be plenty of coverage and interest if a few hundred thousand Americans had died in an incident or ongoing situation.

Perhaps a large portion of the population believes that there is something that they can do to prevent something like the VA Tech incident from happening again....
Heheh, what do you think the chances are of reinstating the assault weapons ban? If the Congress were to act today, it would be done. But the NRA and its puppets will stall for a few weeks, and Americans will forget all about this.


Like I said, Americans sicken me sometimes.



You're right, scaeagles ... we do have a shot at preventing something like this, vs. doing anything about Rwandaraq-type scenarios.


But we won't.



God save us.

[€uroMeinke]

I think you'll have to let humanity sicken you and not just Americans - My guess is you'll find those ratios play out with local biases, whatever the local bias. People are selfish and generally care only about themselves.

[scaeagles]

I suppose a differing point of view might say that should the professor who sacrificed himself (or any other number of people) have possessed a firearm he may have prevented many of the deaths by stopping the shooter.

[lizziebith]

Are you...uh...suggesting arming teachers? I mean, the guy might have had a gun at home. I don't know. But it sounds like you think teachers could (should?) bring guns to class to prevent death. Gosh...as generous as I feel these days to all viewpoints, that just sounds a tad like crazy talk. Sorry.

[blueerica]

I think he's just throwing it out there for opposition's sake - or at least that's what I got from the tone of that post.

Or not.

[Alex]

There are some for whom what scaeagles said seems painfully obvious and self evidence. There are others for whom it is equally obviously and self evidently bat**** insane.

But the two extremes that seem incontrovertable are:

1. If everybody on campus Monday was armed he would have killed many fewer than 32 people.

2. If absolutely nobody on campus Monday was armed he would have killed many few than 32 people.

The worst combination would seem to be 1 mass murderer with guns while nobody else has any.

So, from a strictly logistical perspective, it is easier to have more (non mass murderers) gun carriers about or to guarantee that no mass murderer has guns?

There's a certain logic to it. Me? I'd pass a constitutional amendment altering the 2nd amendment and then ban the manufacture of handguns beyond the needs of military and law enforcement and outlaw private ownership of handguns.

If that isn't going to happen (and it isn't likely) then maybe having more armed sane people makes sense (that's the normal response, in the form of police, to outbreaks of violence anyway).

[innerSpaceman]

Arming the citizenry to prevent violence will only lead to more deaths.

The lone mad gunman scenario is pretty rare. In most instances where someone is threatened with a gun ... someone else drawing will only result in gunfire where far more people get hurt or killed.


And in a society where we pay taxes for common protection, the solution to our protection should not be an armed populace. The onus should not be on us as individual citizens to protect life and limb with deadly force. Unless, of course, you're talking about taking 12 steps back from civilization.

[Alex]

The only way common protection could be guaranteed is if the government you hate put police in every location.


But like I said. For some the logic I laid out makes perfect sense, for others it is bat**** insane and never the twain shall meet.

It's kind of like the abortion issue. There'll never be agreement because there is fundamental disagreement on the underlying axioms.

[CoasterMatt]

All the gun control laws in the world wouldn't stop something like this from happening; but there is something that can help prevent this sort of thing, mental health resources.

This country has tons of money for research on keeping an old man's pecker hard, but they can't seem to find the coins to drop on helping people who might be getting lost along life's way.

[wendybeth]

Great post and point, Matt.:snap:

[Alex]

I don't see how that would have prevented this case, though. Short of forced commitment and treatment (which we got rid of 25 years ago), which, without the clarity of hindsight would have been pretty sketchy.

[blueerica]

I wonder how far mental resources can go in a situation like this. A person has a choice to take part in treatments. Outside of that, they would have to be declared mentally incompetent to keep them there, or imprisoned. I haven't kept up to date with the ridiculous over-coverage (IMO), but from what was apparent before, I'm not sure it was enough to have gotten the courts into action to force him into some sort of mental institution. Questions and concerns aren't usually enough to make that kind of thing happen, right?

He was 23, after all.

[wendybeth]

I can't speak for other areas, but ours has been hard hit by mental health cuts. Between the cuts that not only limit but actually prohibit help, and the HEPA laws, etc, the lunatics are running the show. I know whereof I speak here- my mother is off the charts and we can't do **** about it, even though she tried to kill someone in a nursing home a while back. We can't make her take her meds or live in a decent place, and finally we had to distance ourselves or go nuts along with her. The professor, I think her name is Roy, expressed disbelief at the impotency the system had with this obvious time bomb, and I share her frustration.

[Alex]

Not in Virigina. Virginia requires the person be an imminent threat to for a commitment and evaluation. In other words, they would have had to catch him on the way to the lecture hall with the guns and an clear intent to start shooting people.

Other states have somewhat lower threshholds but it isn't clear to me that he would have met any state's requirements for forced commitment.

[scaeagles]

THe Supreme Court case Castle Rock vs Gonzales has basically said that we have no specific right to police protection even though we pay for it. It is a general thing, not a specific thing. The gist of that case was a woman had a restraining order against her estranged husband and the police failed to protect her. Either she or her family tried to sue the police department for failing to do their job (I can't recall the exact details), and it was ruled that the police is not a private security force.

My point is that even though we pay taxes for said "protection", we cannot rely on it nor expect it to be there when needed.

What would the difference be between a trained and armed professer carrying a weapon and security officer with a weapon? Not mandatory, of course, but voluntary. I don't see the insanity, personally. Obviously being a "gun free zone" didn't help those 30+ people at VA Tech.

However, as Alex said, there will never be anything close to agreement on this. In an earlier post I said that Americans might feel like they can do something about situations like this, but I don't think there is anything that can be done. Bad people are bad people. Disturbed people are disturbed people. It is not possible for laws or restrictions to stop all bad or disturbed people who wish to do harm.

[Strangler Lewis]

We can't eliminate all risk, so the question has to be what risks do we accept and what kind of a society do we want to become to eliminate certain risks? Personally, I can't equate concealed carry with other forms of risk management such as auto insurance because you simply cannot forget that you have that gun and go on with your life.

Yesterday I was in line behind a police officer at Peets. I gave him a wide berth, and I stopped my four year old from running around. Personally, I don't want to have to worry that if somebody bumps me in the coffee line, they're going for my gun, and I don't want to live with the operating assumption that life threatening violence can happen around every corner in a good neighborhood the same way I live with the assumption that car accidents can happen.

[CoasterMatt]

ah yes, that wonderful "good neighborhood" bullcrap...

If 10 kids get picked off over a weekend in a "bad neighborhood", there's no 'national outcry' or 'deep soul searching'.

Yes, this story is tragic, but it's gonna happen again, and worse - just think, all this guy had was 2 handguns and a whole lotta rage.

[scaeagles]

We can't eliminate all risk, so the question has to be what risks do we accept and what kind of a society do we want to become to eliminate certain risks?

Exactly. Individually, we all make different choices as to the risks we are willing to take. Some enjoy recreation drugs, but there are risks involved and I have never been one to want to take those risks. Even though I am a staunch gun rights advocate, I do not possess a firearm because I have not taken the time to get the training I feel necessary to be a responsible gun owner.

But I like to jump out of airplanes. Go figure.

So we get back to what is deemed best for society. There are a lot of screwed up laws and regulations that are deemed best for society, and everyone here would agree with that I'm sure, but not on which laws and regulations fit that description.

[CoasterMatt]

Now people are saying - limit the amount of bullets somebody can buy.

Guess what? That won't affect a ton of people who load their own rounds!

Isn't insanity doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results? A person disturbed, evil; call them what you will that is determined to unveil their sick machinations to the world won't be stopped by gun control/ammo control laws.

This is something I'm very passionate about - if anybody wants to honor the victims of this thing, they'll go and seek reform of the mental health care system in this country.

[SacTown Chronic]

If all the students at Va Tech had been armed, the death toll from the murderer's gun might have been lower, but there probably would have been crossfire wounds and/or deaths. Panicked civilians armed with guns will only make the situation worse.


In most instances where someone is threatened with a gun ... someone else drawing will only result in gunfire where far more people get hurt or killed.I've never told this story before because, frankly, I would prefer to forget it ever happened, but I'll share it now:

Last fall a punk kid (his girlfriend was driving) pulled a gun on me - with my family sitting in our car not 20 feet away - and accused me of cutting him off in traffic. Up until the moment he flashed the gun at me I had been trying to play the role of appeaser and peacekeeper. I didn't cut him off but I felt the best way to diffuse the situation was to tell him I didn't realize I had cut him off and I apologized for it. This obviously wasn't what the guy was after and he pulled the gun. Instead of the fear that he so much wanted to see, he got my anger. I told him he could either get the fvck away from me or get his face beaten beyond recognition. The (false) confidence he felt because he was holding the gun turned to panic and he told the girl to punch it. When he was safely out of my reach, he fired a single shot straight up towards the sky.

Pulling that gun in front of my family stirred up incredible anger in me and to this day I'm thankful that I have an aversion to guns because had I been armed, I think I might have shot the punk.

I thought I had been unaffected by the incident but two nights later I had a horrible dream that involved me staring down the barrel of a gun the size of a rocket launcher. I woke up sweating and shaking.

[LSPoorEeyorick]

I have to spread more mojo before I can thusly commend CM and STC for their statements. So I thusly commend them here.

[innerSpaceman]

I think STC's revelation goes a long way towards illustrating why arming everyone, or even allowing voluntary concealed weapons carrying, would be a tragic mistake among the human type.


And Coaster Matt may be right about psych treatment being more effective than gun restrictions, and neither being very effective at all. Neither would likely have prevented this particular incident, but it remains true that Cho purchased and used guns and ammo clips previously covered under the expired assault weapons ban.

Saying he would have gotten the stuff illegally, or simply reloaded more slowly is kinda changing the subject. The single life such a difference in his killing capacity might have saved is of paramount importance ... if it's your own, or your son's or daughter's.

[Prudence]

Mental illness is still seen as a personal failing - a choice someone has made to not think "appropriately". And because it's not considered a "real" illness, there is great resistance to expanding treatment options. People who are depressed should get over it. People who are psychotic should be locked up where we don't have to interact with them. In fact, I think many people associate psychosis with criminal behavior - not that psychosis leads to criminal behavior, but that being psychotic is in itself a criminal act, justifying incarceration.

It's a choice society has made. We - not individually, but as a society - have decided that mental illness is an willful individual flaw that we're not going to support treatment for something that's all in someone's head. Of course, that means things like this happen, but that's seen as just evidence of how awful the shooter was, not how difficult it is to access appropriate mental health treatment. And we all know the shooter was awful or he wouldn't have had any psychosis in the first place, right?

[mousepod]

I have lots of peripheral experience with guns. Working in the San Francisco Sheriff's Dept office (and the jail), I come in contact with many people who legally carry firearms every day as well as people who are currently incarcerated for illegal possession or use of guns. I work with a deputy who shot and killed a suspect who was threatening the life of his partner. I've fired guns (on a range), and I've been held up at gunpoint when I lived in New York.

Through the years, I've become more centrist in many of my beliefs, because I always try to keep an open mind and approach each situation and experience for what it is.

That's why using the Virginia massacre as an argument for or against gun control makes me sick.

In the big picture, both sides have points, to be sure. But realistically, this event was a unique and sad event, but no more. It's no more proof that gun control works than it's proof that gun control doesn't work. Within hours of the shootings, there were pundits on television proclaiming that the real culprit was the violence that young people are exposed to on television and in video games. If the interpretation of the Second Amendment is up for grabs based on one sick kid, why not toss the First Amendment into the mix, too? Bah.

Guns scare me. More guns scare me more. I've never been aware of any "well regulated" militia, except maybe that of white supremacists or survivalists, so that scares me, too. I've never made the choice to own a gun. If my neighbor wants one, I'd hope he makes the same choice, but I wouldn't know. I support the debate in theory, but I wish that the loudest arguments on either side weren't so maniacal.

[blueerica]

While I do agree that there should be higher quality mental services available, I do not see how it could have prevented what happened this past Monday. Outside of willfully submitting oneself to therapy, treatment and counseling, there is nothing we could have done, or should have done. Up until Monday, from what I could tell, Cho had committed no crime other than being a creep - and how many creeps are out there in the world?

I do not want to see witch-hunts against those whom some perceive as having an illness.

I don't want to see us turn back to a time of forced treatments.

I'm struggling, for some reason, to find a way to explain what I'm trying to get at... I guess most of all, I believe that forcing treatment is a slippery slope. We can say now that this will be a benefit, but who is to say that it can't turn into a tool for persecution, a different sort of imprisonment - perhaps for even those who do not suffer from any mental illness... a tool to lock away the opposition. Call them crazy, and have them be gone. I know that's pretty extreme, but it is possible. Plus, my freedoms are all I really have, even if they are perceived. I don't want what shreds are left to be decided for myself to be taken away.

So yes, I think we need to have better mental services available. Forcing it, labeling people, and perhaps unnecessarily incarcerating them in a facility is not a choice we should make for people.

[Strangler Lewis]

Even though I am a staunch gun rights advocate, I do not possess a firearm because I have not taken the time to get the training I feel necessary to be a responsible gun owner.

While such statements partake of restraint, I do wonder how much they actually fetishize firearms to an unhealthy degree. My father always had handguns, which he kept in his sock drawer. As a little kid, I would help my mother fold laundry, and I would put away my dad's socks in the drawer where his guns were. At some point, I assume that I was told "Don't touch these." So I didn't. As I teenager, long after I stopped helping my mother with the laundry, I still went into my dad's sock drawer a lot because that's where he kept his porn. I left the guns alone just as I left the papers in his den alone.

My dad was in WWII, but I'm fairly confident that he never took a course in responsible gun ownership or spent hours practicing to shoot the little girl with the switchblade instead of the masked thug with the flower. He knew where the safety was.

Now, my friend who is the most passionate Second Amendment advocate, hunter, etc. has a number of handguns. He keeps them in a safe by his bedside. This safe has a door that has been customized with the imprint of his right palm so that, supposedly only he can open it. To my mind, spending so much time thinking about guns and devising neat gadgets related to guns and devising courses related to guns only makes guns that more attractive and mysterious to inquisitive young people.

[flippyshark]

Speaking of fetishizing, how many times do I have to look at those stupid pictures the killer took of himself!? (NBC execs must have messed themselves with glee when that package arrived.) I collapsed the "lead news photo" section of my Yahoo home page just so I wouldn't have to look at the guy pointing a gun at me anymore. Naturally, my TV is off as always. But leaving my house means I will see those images again and again today, on front pages in newspaper vending machines, on the TV monitors that lurk in practically every restaurant, shop or lobby, and so on. Surely this media overexposure is exactly what this messed-up kid wanted, and damned if the media aren't accomodating. I was especially vexed by a headline I saw when I first logged on today - Va. Tech victims horrified by killer photos. Gee, no f***in' kidding! So, let's shove it in their faces for a few more days. (Then next week, they'll almost certainly feature on the covers of TIME and Newsweek. I can hardly wait.) I would have found it refreshing if instead, MSNBC had come on the air, told about the mailing it received, and announced that they weren't showing anything, just to spite the sick bastard. Instead, I imagine those documents are going to spawn books and TV specials. I'll be doing something else, thanks.

[innerSpaceman]

Where are the battlefield photos would turn the American people against war on a dime?

There's no actual blood in the Cho photos, so the networks and periodals can display them ad nauseum. But the photos which are somehow too offensive or not local enough for American sensibilities (according to our media nannies) are not displayed.

The Cho photos do nothing but titilate. Photos of the daily carnage in Iraq, on a daily basis and glaring in the faces of any American who turns on a computer, a tv, or glances at a newspaper ... could help save lives.


Just lives we don't happen to care about. Or, in any event, which the media assumes we don't care about ... while doing nothing to encourage us to care.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Nothing like sending the message, "If you're a pathologically depressed individual thinking that the only way you can make your mark on this world is to hand the media a litany of manifestos and then kill some innocent people...go for it, it works great!!"

[Not Afraid]

Yup. Publicity 101 for psychopaths.

[innerSpaceman]

Too bad that Zodiac movie came out a month too early. It was right on point on this issue, and might not have sunk like a stone at the box office.

[Strangler Lewis]

Where are the battlefield photos would turn the American people against war on a dime?


Battlefield photos? I thought the Bush adminstration was prohibiting photos of flag-draped coffins.

On the other hand . . .the whole thing about going forward with "open eyes" is tricky. I imagine, if we had full disclosure about the collateral consequences of everything we do, we wouldn't get out of bed in the morning. Or we would because we wouldn't care about the people whose ox was being gored.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court upheld Congress's criminalization of an abortion method because of how nasty it was, which it explained in excruciating detail. This was not an undue burden on abortion because other methods were available that the statute did not reach. Of course, the court detailed some of these as well, so we pretty much know how it will decide other cases that attack the method but not the right. This is the same way that challenges to execution methods are being litigated; the right to execute is not challenged, just the nasty way it's implemented.

So, whether the question is abortion, capital punishment or a, for the sake of argument, just war, how much weight in the debate should the evidence that is likely to provoke the most emotional response be given?

[flippyshark]

And, to add the ridiculous to the already deplorable, how about this headline in today's imdb updates:

NBC Weighs How To Handle Killer's Package

Nope, I'm not making that one up.

[Not Afraid]

LOL! Don't they have proofreaders any longer?

[blueerica]

Oh gawd....

I'm guessing it's passe to proofread anymore. I have two textbooks with glaring grammatical errors. One text book, for my Business Communication class, stressed using proper grammar, spelling, word usage and the like... but it seems to get a C on the same count for itself.

/end derail

[Strangler Lewis]

LOL! Don't they have proofreaders any longer?

That's a rather personal question.

(Okay, that was a stretch.)

[blueerica]

/shakes head

[Alex]

Not that it is a big distinction but the news at IMDb is not an internal product, they synidcate WENN.

[LSPoorEeyorick]

LOL! Don't they have proofreaders any longer?

Wait... I'm confused. Is there a typo I'm missing?

I can understand why it's a very, very bad headline. But proofreaders are generally checking for grammar and punctuation. Copy-editors look at big questions like "gee, why are you implying that they're doing anything with the killer's genitals?"

[innerSpaceman]

LOL! Don't they have proofreaders any longer?

That's a rather personal question.

(Okay, that was a stretch.)

Yeah, but that's how they got longer in the first place. Most weren't born that way.





The girthiness, however, is all nature.

[Not Afraid]

Wait... I'm confused. Is there a typo I'm missing?

I can understand why it's a very, very bad headline. But proofreaders are generally checking for grammar and punctuation. Copy-editors look at big questions like "gee, why are you implying that they're doing anything with the killer's genitals?"

OMG! How COULD I use the term proofreader rather than the proper copy-editor. Shoot me now.


In other big headline news:

Va. Tech shooter was laughed at

God help us. I expect everyone to stop making fun of my typos immediately or fear for your life.

[Alex]

They never quite seem to get the targets they truly hate.

So I assume that if we continue laughing at you then a group of crazy Knott's fans should fear for their lives.

[SacTown Chronic]

What typos? NA truly digs Darkbeef and she wears undergarments made of granola.


Va. Tech shooter was laughed at
Is this one for the urinal thread?

[Capt Jack]

I keep seeing the title and reading "Vikings in Iraq"

[LSPoorEeyorick]

OMG! How COULD I use the term proofreader rather than the proper copy-editor. Shoot me now.

I'm not being an ass about it, NA, I genuinely thought you were talking about some sort of typo that made it funnier. And I couldn't find it, which drove me nuts because I am a professional proofreader, and if there's a typo and I can't find it, I panic!

[Prudence]

The Lounge of Tomorrow -- where sooner or later every thread assesses the girthiness of someone's package.

[Snowflake]

The Lounge of Tomorrow -- where sooner or later every thread assesses the girthiness of someone's package.

visible mojo Pru:snap:
darned funny Pru :D

[Ghoulish Delight]

The Lounge of Tomorrow -- where sooner or later every thread assesses the girthiness of someone's package.
You rang?

[Chernabog]

The Lounge of Tomorrow -- where sooner or later every thread assesses the girthiness of someone's package.

Well my interest has officially been piqued. I'll tell you how my date goes tonight. :D

[innerSpaceman]

I've moved this thread to the Daily Grind, because it did not get the remotely nasty response I feared when suggesting 33 American lives were petty compared to the daily death toll in Iraq.


In fact, now that we are talking about killer's junk and killer junk, I may have to move this to the Lounge if neither Iraq nor Virgina return to the fore.

[Alex]

This article (http://www.slate.com/id/2164510/nav/tap2/) makes some points along a similar vein as the thread's original topic.

[CoasterMatt]

I've been asked by my old Peer Counseling mentor to come talk to a bunch of high school students about the Virginia Tech shootings - I did a lot of counseling with kids during/after the L.A. riots, after Columbine, and now this sad situation.

[Not Afraid]

We now the the lovely copy-cat attempts at publicity to contend with.

Do we put such a high price on fame that people will go to any lenghts to achieve it?

[Bornieo: Fully Loaded]

We now the the lovely copy-cat attempts at publicity to contend with.

Do we put such a high price on fame that people will go to any lenghts to achieve it?

I have no evidence to back this up, but I wonder if it really is the "fame" of being an infamous murder of innocents that makes "them" do the things they do. To what end? You're dead, prob. a large crap in your pants - is there some sort of gratification that comes from this?

I wonder?

[Ghoulish Delight]

I have no evidence to back this up, but I wonder if it really is the "fame" of being an infamous murder of innocents that makes "them" do the things they do. To what end? You're dead, prob. a large crap in your pants - is there some sort of gratification that comes from this?

I wonder?For many, it seems not so much that they particularly want to be famous because they killed someone. Rather, they want to be heard and killing people is the only way they can see to get heard. For example, had the VT killer sent that package to NBC without the accompanying slaughter, what do you think the odds of it getting as much attention as it has would be?

[Alex]

And, many people can't truly imagine being dead and insensate to the world. Many of us deep down think we'll somehow keep experiencing the world in some way even after we're dead.

[Not Afraid]

I guess we'll won't really know what the ultimate driver is. No reason is makes a lot of sense to me.

[Bornieo: Fully Loaded]

NA, AS, GD -

So true.

It seems the mentality was "I'll show them" on an individual level more than "ooh, I made the front page of the LA Times." But, I think that itself is an individual mentality too. David Coresh (sp) I'm sure wanted to make headlines - as did Timothy McVay (sp).