Have to weigh in on this one, I guess.
The shooting at Virginia Tech is tragic. 32 people dying is never, ever a good thing. I feel awful for all families affected. This morning, I ran into a blog post with a list of victims, and hundreds of comments from friends and family asking for information about loved ones. Since those comments were left, virtually all of those names have been added the list of dead. Truly, this was a despicable act.
Of course, though, the media latched onto the story and began exploiting it within a few hours. This should not be a massive news story. There is nothing to follow. Cho Seung-Hui is dead. All the damage that could be done is done. Leave the families alone. All that is left is for the big media outlets to find out and/or fabricate as much information about the killer to appease the dark apetites of the dumb American public. He was a very disturbed individual that truly needed help. End.
I would love to believe that the people in the news media are just that damn compassionate. But the pieces just don’t fit. Those stories of people dying in Iraq, BAH, no shock value anymore. Doesn’t sell. But REAL AMERICAN BLOOD! College kids, no less. That’s a story! And a depressed sociopath from Korea! Somebody should option this shit!
Also quite expectedly, countless people are already trying to politicize the massacre. For instance: this piece by Mike Hendricks in the Star. Look, I hate guns. I’ve never shot, or even touched one. I despise them. But guns are really not the issue. Certainly not the only one. If guns were outlawed completely in US, we would still probably have an astronomical murder rate. Would killing somebody be less convenient? Sure. But guns are very far from being the only means of doing so. I guess it helps people who don’t want to see a problem for what it is to objectify it by attributing it only to the concrete cause of the tragedy. I think if anybody spent more than a few minutes thinking about it, though, they would realize that there is a pervasive sickness eating the people of the United States from the inside out. Everything from its culture to its language to its value system has become diseased and repugnant. “Mental disorders” have spread exponentially over the last century. Every kid, it seems, has ADHD. Every adult suffers from anxiety and depression. Without a drastic change to the fundamentals of this country, in fifty years, it will be a fucking wasteland, and there will be a massacre every week.
Our morally empty, emotionally numb youth are mocking this tragedy. Look. We’re on our way.
Stop pointing fingers. The problem is not the existance of guns. The problem is the politicians. Yes, the problem is television. Yes, the problem is video game killing simulators. The problem is Christianity. The problem is the exploitative, immoral news media.
Our leaders murder hundreds a day — why can’t we?
Sayin’.
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