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Hi Madonna ~

With your reading the content of my self-expressed postings, I'm not sure how you could be confused or think I'm fence sitting as a result of my posting one article that is linked within another that I posted first. I feel my position couldn't possibly be any clearer. In written communication, however, it seems many things can get misinterpreted. I've done what the media has done in this circumstance, which is to offer an alternative point of view. Just because.

Nugent is also an avid animal hunter. I don't favour that, either.

One of the flaws that I see in Nugent's 'arguments' is his conceptual leap to the symptom of the problem, bypassing altogether its origin; the fact that with gun control, the situations he cited, where armed 'protectors' came to the fore, would likely not have occurred in the first place.

Another flaw is that he presumes that someone armed with their own pistol is going to be able to do a flyin' 'f' to stop a madman with two high-powered guns, fully-loaded with back-up. The police with all their fire power got there soon enough to collect the body, after the killer killed himself. Owning and carrying a gun does not de facto make a person the evil-stopping hero. People carrying and firing guns get themselves killed all the time.

Thirty-two people dead on a U.S. college campus pursuing their American Dream, mowed-down over an extended period of time by a lone, non-American gunman in possession of a firearm on campus in defiance of a zero-tolerance gun ban. Feel better yet? Didn't think so.

I resent these two things, which I've italicized. These people were not pursuing their "American" Dream. They were pursuing their human dreams... some of which involved bettering conditions in other countries, as well as international relations. They happened to be doing this pursuing in America, on a "U.S." college campus. "Non-American" has no place being in this article. That person had been here since he was 8 years old and his ethnicity and/or citizenship were irrelevant to the crimes.


~ Lizzy

1) Yes, I do believe that fame was the goal of this killer.

It was the goal of another mass murderer that took the life of a young woman and wounded many people full of future in a college in my town, last fall.

Propably it was not the goal of the first young disturbed men who done this, but now, since the media made big shows with these events when they first appears in the schools in U.S.A., it is the main purpose of those killers. They don't make any mistery about that.

Of course thay also want to punish and clean the world of pest, because they are convinced that they are OK and all the rest of the world is not.

But if they could think clearly, they would not do this. They would look for fame, or to be recognized - or to solve problems they see in society- in positive, constructive ways. They would make things better not worst.


2) The media are a powerful mean of communication. They can be used for enterntainement as well as for serious matter.

When their goal is to inform the population, yes, I do believe that they have a social responsibility to discriminate what they are doing - they can't act like a circus that show some monsters and horrors to entertain the crowd and feed it with emotions, like big-fat-unhealthy-unecessary- too big portions-junk food, just in order to make money, because it is not good for the health of this population.

It is not necessary to show everything and anything to inform. Certainly not giving a stage 24h/24 for 5 days to the stuff psychos sent to media, because it will lead only to more mass murders.

I do believe that adults are not really affected by this, but it is - obviously - not the case of the young people who are exposed to that stuff.

Actually, yes, in other fields, like terrorism, for example, media do not show the videos that terrorists send to them when they take ostages. They only show pictures of the ostages and they explain what happened and what the terrorists want, because they know that they would do the game of those people if they show whatever they send them. It is a way to fight back terrorism.

I do belive the media should do the same for sick people that threatened the population.

My feeling has been that he had the same opportunities to live a constructive life as his classmates did. Based on something, he was accepted to Virginia Tech in the first place, so there had to be levels of accomplishment in his life, as well. His 'playwriting' was not a strength. When I read it, I thought how juvenile it was for someone in college. How base and crass. When he wrote his 'manifesto' he spoke in more complex terms and in more 'adult' fashion, though the content was still deeply disturbing and simple in its way.

How such other crucial aspects of his existence, as his mental health, got oversighted, I have no idea.

I feel it depends on the mental health status of the adult as to whether they'll be affected and influenced by events such as this. When depression and desperation have hit upon a job loss, there have been adults who entered their workplace and killed numbers of others who still had their jobs... a kind of 'retribution' for their own loss, an 'even-ing of the score.'

With children, they are FAR more vulnerable to these media saturations of at least assured fame, if not glory... but these distinctions can't always be made by those same children. The terrorist analogy is a good one... and for the very same principles, these events should be heavily edited from the public view. It is NOT necessary for our consciousnesses to be bloated by the 'junk food' [a good analogy, too] ~ the repetitive junk food ~ of footage and that face. Much of it for emotion-sucking and ratings. Even the verbiage used for links provided on CNN... "watch a mother cry," etc. ~ a dynamic of almost voyeurism is heightened. All of this has its own negative effects on us, as well. One could consider these acts as personal-domestic terrorism, as it shocks and creates feelings of danger in our world.

For those who would be influenced toward copy-cats, it concurrently creates a 'competitive' aspect to want to 'outdo' the ones preceding.

I'm not discounting the media-notoriety aspects of this; however, I'm also not putting this at the feet of that. At 8 years old, this person knew nothing of all that. He was just a very non-communicative child. He went on to college, with apparent plans to fulfill. They haven't really talked about what his grades were.

Their [these mass murderers's] thinking doesn't follow the normal patterns in the first place. They make connections that would not be considered logical. They aren't a mentally healthy person seeking fame. They are a mentally ill person reacting to and creating events in their life and the lives of others. I'm not discounting notoriety via the 'reliable' puppetry of the media... the media, press packet he created and sent speaks for itself... as does the media's compliance in exposing its contents to the world.

If the media is not so 'shock-and-awe' based in other countries as it is here, that's good; yet, here it's a very identifiable element of newcasting on the majority of networks.



~ Lizzy

Could be of course that the man was very, very ill.
That cannot be blamed on the media.
That was the initial diagnosis, it appears.
And this talk about the TV networks doing this and that.
Do you not have on/off buttons on your TV?

Yes. That's my point, too, Red Poppy; regarding his level of mental illness. This was not some kid too lazy to want to work for recognition. He was delusional and steeped in paranoia. Shooting 32 people multiple times relates in no way to any semblance of normalcy... mores [no accent marks available, but pronounced 'morays'] or state of mind/psychological state. This is many, many and deeply layered.

Yes... we do have On/Off buttons, of course. Children remain victims to this, however; some parents are not filtering this. There is a deep, driving desire to know, to understand that keeps us returning for news. As a population, we seek assurance and reassurance that this is somehow explainable, so that we might be reassured that it's safe for our own children to go away to university, to go to school, for us to go to our workplaces, and so it goes. There is a 'need to know,' yes... but there is also a need for restraint.

Still, it is incumbent on the media to be responsible. I was shocked to see the plays and then the videos available for viewing. These are NORMAL things to be held in privacy until an investigation is completed. They were, instead, broadcast worldwide at a juncture where the investigation had barely commenced. It's shock value and, even though we are ultimately responsible for what we do... we see panels of judges rating films for appropriateness of viewing... yet, the media splashes everything but the blood itself for all to see. Children have computers and TVs; are home in the afternoons alone; have cell phones that can access the Internet; have libraries and Internet cafes to go to... yet, for all the film ratings, these images are saturating all forms of the media. With no regard or respect for or consideration of the families and loved ones.

Would you want to turn on your TV and look down the very same barrel of a gun, held by the very same person, his face frozen in hardness, the person who just riddled your daughter or son, sister or brother, wife or husband, paramour or closest friend, with bullets, or blew off her or his face with them, and whom you will never see again; yet, you're seeing him, in virtual action?? Seeing the exact same [no virtual here], very last thing that they saw in this life?? I don't know whether to account it to lack of morality, ethics, common human decency, respect, sensitivity, compassion... who knows... but there is something deeply wrong about what the media moguls are doing with this. It's a macabre and gruesome circus. Would you say to that parent or that person, "You have an On/Off button, don't you?"


~ Lizzy

What we're looking at herethen is the responsibility or irrespomsibility of the executives and managers - the business people - not necessarily the journalists. Different thing!

You're right, Red Poppy. There's a distinction and they're getting lumped in together as "media" ~ the decisions are made at the dollar-sign levels, by the editors who sit behind the desks and the money people; whereas, the journalists get the story. Editing and decision-making as to what will or won't run comes from a higher level, even when those decisions in situations such as this come from a 'lower level' of their humanity. It's corporate, not the man-on-the-street journalist who's doing it. Journalists may obtain bizarre information or photos, as they know the way the winds blow; yet, whether or not these make it out has nothing to do with them... unless they're blogging.

I feel that journalists are invaluable and do us a great service; many put their lives on the line in order to bring us the truth of what's going on around the world, by removing the political filters through which we obtain our information; and I don't like the thought of print media disappearing. That is apparently being addressed via partnering with Google and bloggers and other such entities. I believe it's Boston where it's doing a trial run.


~ Lizzy

I just heard on NPR how a woman who knew one of the women said she felt like she was doing okay, until she saw "that video" [you somehow know which one "that" refers to]... and then described, almost to the word, the same as I did, how upsetting it was to see the video showing the very last thing that her friend saw. I'm not surprized. I'll be surprized if she and I are in the minority.

You are OK lizzytysh.

Now anger, as an emotion, is not something to feel guilty about.

Nor being sick.

We are not naive and we know that injustices in this world made people angry. Not every angry people act with violence - which, I hope, they feel guilty for their behaviour because it would mean they are not psychopaths only mentally disturbed people, probably because under some circumstances that can be changed. Yes people sometimes turn crazy just because it it the only way to adapt themselves to a crazy situation. As it is more difficult to solve a social problem than to blame individual, well....

Also if there is no "bad" emotion in itself, there is "bad" ideas, and "bad" behaviors and people should be able to do the difference between an emotion and idea, and a behavior - but this is not something that it is teached in our schools.

Now I am afraid that innocent angry and/or disturbed and/or "weard" persons would be targeted as violent (dangerous). This would lead to less freedom and less democracy.

Also remembering what Humanponey said about weird experimentions of the CIA (the ones with enough evidences to take them as a reality): As the guy passed some time in psychiatry, I hope he was not an object of experiment of them psy. I am half joking because.

Because like Leonard Cohen said (ey! this is his forum here, he?) killers of goverment are called heros, and civil ones : murderers.

If we are to do digression, lets do it with grand style.

From saturdays Globe and Mail:

Read the whole article here - it is quite lengthy:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ ... ernational

Young Mr. Cho's elders, most of them still in Korea, remember a slight child, with deep brown eyes and jet black hair, a wan silhouette who never developed any the of the rough-and-tumble traits typical of little boys. With Mr. Cho, there was no chattering, no persistent asking of questions, no real sound. "He was quiet from the beginning, compared to his sister, who was very smart," recalls his 81-year-old grandfather. His family wondered if perhaps Mr. Cho was unusually gentle, troubled by the Korean language, or born deaf. When forced, he talked. But he spoke so seldom at times, his relatives wondered if the boy had forgotten how. Even when they prodded him, it failed to shake him out of his emotional detachment.

"If I nudged him and tried to talk with him, he wouldn't answer," his grandmother remembered last week.

Mr. Cho's maternal grandfather, Kim Hyong-shik, was stumped by the child's coldness.

"He would never run to me like my other grandchildren," he said. "I thought he might be . . . dumb."

While Mr. Cho's relatives' disdain seemed to grow quickly -- ("He was never an adorable boy," a great-aunt spat) -- his mother doted, fretting over her child, making frequent pilgrimages to church to pray her son would change.

"Normally, mothers and sons talk. There was none of that for them," remembers great-aunt Kim Yang-soon.

The mother's anxious efforts would be repeated once the family reached the United States, as Hyang-im made the rounds of medical specialists, trying to find the key to unlock Mr. Cho from his isolation.

Although Mr. Cho's family members back in Korea had limited contact with his parents after they reached the U.S., some recall receiving news from Hyang-im of Mr. Cho's early medical examinations. While the relatives seem muddled on precisely what Mr. Cho's diagnosis was -- their accounts range from clinical depression and withdrawal to savant syndrome -- it's clear the boy was not given a clean bill of mental health.

For Mr. Cho's mother, that was a damning fact.

"She was heartbroken," said Hyang-im's aunt, Kim Yang-soon. "After they moved to America, she hoped his silences would ease as he grew older. But in fact they got worse."

At middle school, students remember Mr. Cho carrying on his antisocial behaviour. His difficulty with English only served to widen the gulf between him and other students, some of whom saw him as a target ripe for bullying.

"There were just some people who were really mean to him and they would push him down and laugh at him," recalled Stephanie Roberts, a classmate of Mr. Cho's who heard about the assaults from friends, but never witnessed any.

"They would really make fun of him," she said. "I just remember he was a shy kid who didn't really want to talk to anybody."

From those who recall Mr. Cho's bespectacled face from the throngs of students on Westfield's campus, there's no sign that Mr. Cho was affected by any of the pomp. Chris Davids, a current Virginia Tech senior who graduated from high school with Mr. Cho, said that even as a teen, Mr. Cho would rebuff other students' attempts at making conversation. He tried hard to remain silent and, unless threatened with failure by teachers, refrained from speaking aloud. One of the few times Mr. Cho did read out in English class, Mr. Davids recalled, the teen sounded "like he had something in his mouth." His strangeness caused other students to laugh, taunting him: "Go back to China."

From those who recall Mr. Cho's bespectacled face from the throngs of students on Westfield's campus, there's no sign that Mr. Cho was affected by any of the pomp. Chris Davids, a current Virginia Tech senior who graduated from high school with Mr. Cho, said that even as a teen, Mr. Cho would rebuff other students' attempts at making conversation. He tried hard to remain silent and, unless threatened with failure by teachers, refrained from speaking aloud. One of the few times Mr. Cho did read out in English class, Mr. Davids recalled, the teen sounded "like he had something in his mouth." His strangeness caused other students to laugh, taunting him: "Go back to China."

Then, in October, 2005, in an English class, his straitlaced façade began to fray. His submissions for poet Nikki Giovanni's creative writing class were littered with expletives and sickening scenarios that shone a light into the dark corners of his mind. His recital of a particularly "intimidating" poem he penned scared 63 students away from the class, prompting Ms. Giovanni to confront him.

But Mr. Cho was indifferent, and seemed set on a path. In one seminar, he refused to identify himself by name, using a question mark as his moniker. In another, unable to control the temptation to take photographs of female students under the desk, he found himself in yet more trouble.

In the weeks leading up to Christmas break, in November, 2005, Mr. Cho did something completely uncharacteristic: He called a girl. Then he went to see her in person. His advances so unnerved the girl, another V-Tech student, she called police. No charges were laid against Mr. Cho, although the resulting chat he had with university police marked the beginning of a string of run-ins -- prompted by more messages Mr. Cho sent to another female student -- that coloured the following weeks.

By Dec. 13, Mr. Cho was out of sorts and voluntarily sought help from police and talked with a counsellor. A Montgomery County magistrate said there was probable cause to deem Mr. Cho "mentally ill and in need of hospitalization." Mr. Cho was committed to a nearby psychiatric hospital for evaluation. He was clearly suffering from a mental illness. However, he was deemed not to be a danger to anyone but himself. The next day he was released.

In his more recent writings, "nightmare" plays he submitted for class, Mr. Cho became increasingly deranged. He documented bloody fictional attacks with crude weaponry, and laced his scripts with profanities. In class, he was less responsive than ever, staring off into space, forgetting to remove his headphones, ignoring still more classmates who tried to get him to talk. The most interest he seemed to take in a class was one that examined contemporary horror films and literature -- students from the class recalled him actually taking notes.

Inexplicably, a few weeks ago, Mr. Cho stopped going to class. From information gleaned throughout the week from police and university officials, it has become clear that Mr. Cho devoted much of the last three weeks to preparations for his final act: buying guns, making a video of himself and penning a diatribe railing against rich kids and excess.

"I just wish he would have talked," said his mother's aunt, Kim Yang-soon. "There is an old saying in Korea that people who won't talk will end up killing themselves. That is what happens when the resentment builds up."

There is what is considered normal and what is considered abnormal. This was neither. This was aberrant. For me, this was a state of mind that cannot be explained because there were just too many wires crossed and gnarled. The closest we can come is a simulation of explanation. I don't feel it will ever be a real one, though, as those wires will never be observable as clear pathways.

I looked for a connection in my mind to a CIA or what we accept as being terrorism. As you said, Tchocolatl, only half joking. I just couldn't find a way to make a legitimate link. In my thinking, this was still another example of our 'system' failing us. In the psychiatric realm, unless someone threatens himself or others, our hands are tied. Unfortunately, the element of surprize is part and parcel of mass murders. They are planned and every effort is made to stay beneath the radar. Threats would put a person dead center of the screen.

I heard just a bit ago on NPR about England's ban on handguns, as the result of the Dunblane Massacre, where 16 children and their teacher were killed. It was cited that violent crime hasn't necessarily been reduced, but that crime with this kind of weaponry has... and mass killings have.

They immediately went on to talk about there not being a strong gun lobby there, like there is here... National Rifle Association here [NRA]. Even though rifles can be high-powered and kill many from a distance, it's the concealment that comes with handguns that allowed for two high-powered ones to be brought on campus, and that enabled him to do what he did here. Had others had guns, they wouldn't have been of the power that his were.

For anyone interested in wading through this, I'm wondering how this would or wouldn't have applied there. The problem is that the Baker Act is only effective for 48 hours.

What are the criteria for involuntary psychiatric exams in Florida?

Florida law permits a mental health professional, law enforcement officer, or judge who issues an ex parte order to initiate an involuntary examination only when a person meets the following criteria:

f there is reason to believe that he or she is mentally ill and because of his or her mental illness:

(a) 1. The person has refused voluntary examination after conscientious explanation and (a) disclosure of the purpose of the examination; or

(a) 2. The person is unable to determine for himself or herself whether the examination is (a) necessary; and

(b) 1. Without care or treatment, the person is likely to suffer from neglect or refuse to care for himself or herself; such neglect or refusal poses a real and present threat of substantial harm to his or her well-being; and it is not apparent that such harm may be avoided through the help of willing family members or friends or the provision of other services; or

(a) 2. There is a substantial likelihood that without care or treatment the person will cause serious bodily harm to himself or herself or others in the near future, as evidenced by recent behavior.

What happens after the examination?

If the person examined does not meet the criteria for either involuntary inpatient treatment or involuntary outpatient placement, he or she must be discharged from the receiving facility.

If the person needs treatment and meets the criteria for involuntary inpatient placement, a petition can be filed with the court. The court holds a hearing; if it determines that the person meets the criteria for involuntary inpatient placement, it can order inpatient placement for up to six months.

If, after an examination or a period of inpatient placement, a person is determined to need involuntary treatment in the community, a petition can be filed for involuntary outpatient placement. The court holds a hearing; if it determines that the person meets the nine-part criteria for involuntary outpatient placement, it can order outpatient placement for up to six months. This lesser restrictive alternative to involuntary inpatient placement became available in Florida on January 1, 2005 as a result of the Baker Act reform.

What is Involuntary Outpatient Placement (IOP)?

IOP is a court order that mandates a treatment plan be followed on an outpatient basis. In other states, it is sometimes called “assisted outpatient treatment” or “outpatient commitment.” Since the mid-1980s, Florida and 41 other states have adopted such laws.

Results from the first five years of New York’s Kendra’s Law, on which Baker Act reform was based, demonstrate that it works. While in the program, 55% fewer recipients engaged in suicide attempts or physical harm to self, 49% fewer abused alcohol, 48% fewer abused drugs, and 47% fewer physically harmed others. Quality of life also improved: 74% fewer experienced homelessness, 77% fewer experienced psychiatric hospitalization, 83% fewer experienced arrest, and 87% fewer experienced incarceration. Individuals were also more likely to regularly participate in services and take prescribed medication. These results echo those found in a randomized control study of involuntary outpatient placement at Duke University.

Who can receive IOP?

The IOP criteria applies only to those who have a history of noncompliance with prescribed treatment, combined with either repeated Baker Act admissions or serious violence —a small subgroup of the people who meet the longstanding criteria for involuntary examination. A person can be considered for IOP only if all of the following nine parts of the criteria are met:

(a) The person is 18 years of age or older;

(b) The person has a mental illness:

(c) The person is unlikely to survive safely in the community without supervision, based on a clinical determination;

(d) The person has a history of lack of compliance with treatment for mental illness;

(e) The person has:

1. At least twice within the immediately preceding 36 months been involuntarily admitted to a receiving facility or treatment facility as defined in s. 394.455, or has received mental health services in a forensic or correctional facility. The 36-month period does not include any period during which the person was admitted or incarcerated; or

2. Engaged in one or more acts of serious violent behavior toward self or others, or attempts at serious bodily harm to himself or herself or others, within the preceding 36 months;

(f) The person is, as a result of his or her mental illness, unlikely to voluntarily participate in the recommended treatment plan and either he or she has refused voluntary placement for treatment after sufficient and conscientious explanation and disclosure of the purpose of placement for treatment or he or she is unable to determine for himself or herself whether placement is necessary;

(g) In view of the person’s treatment history and current behavior, the person is in need of involuntary outpatient placement in order to prevent a relapse or deterioration that would be likely to result in serious bodily harm to himself or herself or others, or a substantial harm to his or her well-being as set forth in s. 394.463(1);

(h) It is likely that the person will benefit from involuntary outpatient placement; and

(i) All available less restrictive alternatives that would offer an opportunity for improvement of his or her condition have been judged to be inappropriate or unavailable.

Who can initiate an IOP petition?

A receiving facility administrator or a treatment facility administrator. A receiving facility administrator may file a petition for IOP if a person is examined at a receiving facility and is determined to meet the nine-part IOP criteria. A treatment facility administrator may initiate a petition for IOP if a person is at a treatment facility (i.e., a state hospital) and no longer needs inpatient placement, but could benefit from involuntary outpatient placement, and is determined to meet the nine-part IOP criteria. The petition is filed in circuit court and must include a proposed treatment plan for the individual, along with a certification from the community service provider that the services in the individual’s proposed treatment plan are available. If the services in the individual’s proposed treatment plan are not available, the petition cannot be filed.

Can family members or friends testify at an IOP hearing?

Yes. The court shall allow relevant testimony from individuals, including family members, regarding the person’s prior history and how that prior history relates to the person’s current condition.

What if the order is not followed?

The patient may be brought to a receiving facility in order to determine whether involuntary outpatient placement is still the least restrictive treatment alternative if (1) in the clinical judgment of a physician the patient has failed or has refused to comply with the treatment ordered by the court, (2) efforts were made to solicit compliance, and (3) the patient may meet the criteria for involuntary examination.

What safeguards are in the law?

The reform maintained all safeguards that existed in the mental health treatment law and provided some new patient protections including: (1) before IOP can be ordered, a nine-part criteria that applies to a very small, but specific group of people must be met; (2) the patient is involved in creating the proposed treatment plan; (3) an IOP order can be issued only if the recommended treatment services for the individual are available; (4) the patient gets legal representation at the IOP hearing; and (5) individuals with IOP orders are covered by the patient’s bill of rights.


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Here is some commentary on reacting to 'bad' behaviour. I feel there's a difference between being targeted as violent and being seriously and intensely assessed. Strange behaviours have often been a clue, though they may not manifest in actual threats.

CORAL GABLES, Fla. -- Local university officials say the Virginia Tech tragedy has raised an important question: How do students like Cho Seung-Hui remain on a college campus for years without being identified as a serious threat?

NBC 6's Ari Odzer went to the University of Miami and posed that same question to students and staff alike.

University officials said that it's easy to look back in hindsight, but they believe the challenge is identifying violent students before they act.

At Virginia Tech, school officials got Cho into counseling, but they said it obviously wasn't enough.

Federal privacy laws prevent universities from telling a student's parents about potentially destructive behavior. Officials at UM said students have rights, including the right to act strange.

The Virginia Tech massacre has opened eyes on every college campus in the nation, including UM, and school officials there said strange behavior by a fellow student isn't going to be dismissed anymore.

"I believe I would be more apt now to report strange behavior," Toren Curtis, a UM student, said. "It is just a horrible event that happened and I think we realize that it can happen no matter what university you go to."


"I would say we're all a bit more nervous now," Lisa Dillinger, a UM student, said. "I'm going to look out and report things that are a little different."

"I think we need to be more aware," Danny Carvajal, UM student government president, said. "At the same time, I don't think we should start profiling our students either."

School administrators at UM have a four-page policy to guide them through tricky situations involving students who they determine might be a threat to themselves or to others.

"We're going to do what we believe is the right thing to do," Dr. Patricia Whitely said. "I do believe that's the prudent course of action."

Whitely, the student affairs vice president, told NBC that a faculty panel is considering the evidence, and then could take a variety of actions, from requiring counseling, to kicking a student out of school, to getting police involved and forcing a student into a psychiatric facility.

In the aftermath of the Virginia Tech massacre, universities must now walk a tightrope with fears of a lawsuit, balanced by the fear the student may harm himself or someone else.

Private schools, like UM, can be more restrictive than public schools.

An official at Florida International University said he expects the rules to change in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings.

I feel there needs to be a means of further evaluation when someone is exhibiting some of the behaviours that he was. I feel that the right to have handguns needs to be seriously addressed.

As for the media and its behaviour, I'm listening right now to how the bartenders in Blacksburg [in the U.S., not Ireland or Europe, Red Poppy] are talking with each other and citing how the media's attitude is 'business as usual' at the bars... impatient for lack of instant service when they want more beer... how their attitude is one of "We're the media... big shots from the city... "... how the bartender is busy with a local, a regular who comes every day, someone whose mental and emotional state she's concerned as a result of the tragedy; yet, the media guys are ready for and impatient for more beer. As this woman noted, she and the guy she is currently waiting on are two of the victims of this tragedy that the media guys are reporting on and supposedly concerned about. The reporter noted how this kind of scene is being reported similarly by other bartenders there. Well, there are many ins and outs of situations like this, aren't there.

Another segment was just done where even more disturbing writings were done... quoting from the texts... but the writers were Faulkner, Shakespeare, and the like... and how the kind of bad prose seen in this killer's writing is similar to that seen by many professors and writers in entry-level English classes, but those people don't go on to kill.

Stalking of two women, though lacking in direct threats, was one more element in the constellation of symptoms, though. It still seems to me that what is missing in the ability to adequately assess and predict such egregious outcomes as this could be made up for in limiting a person's ability to carry out their criminal fantasies by limiting their access to the tools/weapons for doing it. It still seems to come down to gun control.

I'm finding that I want to come up with the magic answers here, and it's just not possible. Gun control seems to be the closest.


~ Lizzy

Hi Vern ~

My posting was not written in response to yours. I didn't see yours until after I posted mine, as I was in the midst of doing mine, when yours appeared. Mine is in response to Tchocolatl's, though not in argument with hers... just adding on some of my own additional thoughts and what seem to me to be relevant quotings.


~ Lizzy

Sadly I have to go along with most of Rod Liddle's thoughts in today's Sunday Times.



Lights, camera, killing: America’s deadly craving for celebrity

Rod Liddle
Just 24 hours after Cho Seung-hui’s acts of mayhem, the staff and students of Virginia Tech put on a gig to commemorate the event. There was uplifting music and a multitude of speeches and at the end everyone joined in a mass chant of “Let’s go, Hokies” — Hokies being the pet name for Virginia Tech students.

It was the sort of entertainment with which you will have become increasingly familiar — part Red Nose Day, part Live Aid, part Diana memorial concert, part Nuremberg rally. When it’s on your TV it’s called a telethon and you are meant to watch it. It happened, in Virginia, a day after the shootings. A gig to make everybody feel better.

Another entertainment was prepared a few moments before the shooting began. Cho filmed himself delivering a soliloquy before a camera, wreathed in self-pity and self-justification — the sort of warped, solipsistic bilge you might find at the end of a Quentin Tarantino film, supposedly to explain away, morally, the entertaining bloodbath that preceded it. In fact Cho had ripped off his technique from the Korean director Park Chan-Wook, a Cannes prize winner. He’d seen Park’s horror film, Oldboy.

Everything, especially in America, is appropriated for the purposes of entertainment nowadays. The more vile and murderous the better. On both counts — Cho’s film and the gig at Virginia Tech — the stuff was lapped up. Our responses are preprogrammed. By the time an American kid reaches the age of 18 he or she will have watched some 200,000 acts of violence on TV and 40,000 murders. What’s another 30 or so on top of that? Both Cho and the staff of Virginia Tech were media savvy, schooled in the business of how TV works. Cho knew who his best distributors would be — the film was sent to NBC, which lapped it up. The gig was carried coast to coast.

The liberals are probably right about gun control. There are too many firearms in the United States and too many lunatics having hold of them. But that doesn’t give you the why. It just gives you the how. A society in thrall to television and the cult of celebrity — no matter how stupid, deranged, undeserving — gives you the why.

Cho was not a singularity — far from it. This weekend another maniac possessed of some unspecified grievance went berserk with a gun at Nasa. In October five kids were murdered in an Amish community by Charles Roberts who, too, had vague, self-aggrandising justifications for his actions. In the month preceding Roberts’s killings, there were four gun attacks on students or tutors in US educational establishments. Cho’s just killed a few more than usual.

The murder rate in America is not the highest in the world, but the rate of supposedly motiveless killings certainly is — 39%. A sense of grievance, a gun, a camera — that’s entertainment.

Thank-you LP for this article. I happen to agree with some of it. However, there does seem to be the usual "Only in America-Aren't they Awful-You Get What's Coming to You" snideness. The "Nuremberg Rally" jibe was an especially cheap shot. And untrue to boot.


YdF

Oh, and thanks for coming up with "Pop Idol." The world is a better place.

lizzytysh wrote:I've not heard about his being bullied in school, yet. The accounts from college roommates are of attempts to include him...

Lizzy: you forget I am English. 'School' here ends at eighteen, so when I said I read he had been bullied at school, I meant as a child. (In the UK students are adults. In fact, to all intents and purposes, the age of majority here is now sixteen. It seems weird to us that in some American states you cannot have sex until you are eighteen and cannot drink until you are twenty-one ... yet you can buy a gun with minimal difficulty!)

Someone mentioned Dunblane, where a loner massacred sixteen young children in a Scottish school and then shot himself. Because the gunman happened to hold his hand-gun legally, the Government's response was a law which stops people holding pistols at home - they now have to be left at the gun-club. This was a classic example of knee-jerk politics: all it has done is inconvenience sportsmen with legitimate reasons to handle pistols. Since Dunblane, there has been a massive rise in hand-gun incidents and murders involving illegal weapons, mostly young black-on-black in London, where gang-members command respect if they have a gun. We seem to be going the way of America, and it is intensely depressing: we are not even allowed to carry defensive weapons such as tazers or pepper sprays, which makes ordinary citizens even more fearful.

Lizzy, I think the pistols he carried were low-powered, not high-powered. I read that they were .22 calibre, which is small (at school, I shot .22 and .303 - the former at a maximum of 25 yards, the latter out to 500 yards). One victim was hit three times but still has survived.

I wonder if the Virginia gunman was autistic.

Hi Hydriot,

I believe he had one .22 mm and one 9 mm (police quality).
The latter was much more powerful than the .22 mm.

It's interesting that you question whether he was autistic.
I remember watching the news either on CNN or BBC about 2
days after the shootings and I distinctly saw a banner run across
the bottom of the page that said more or less "The Virginia Tech
shooter was diagnosed with autism." However, I have yet to
hear any news report mention it and I never saw the banner again.

Sherry