Don't let the media hype over the VaTech murders suck you into the culture of irrational fear. The odds are still on your side.
On Monday Cho Seung-Hui decided to move on from writing violent revenge fantasies in English class to express his rage more publicly in an orgy of bullets, blood and death. He ended his own life and the lives of 32 others, and earned a place in the record books as one of the most successful mass murderers in history of the United States, passing George Hennard (1991 Killeen Luby's massacre) for the most firearm killings in a single incident.…
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76 - Clavos
Zedd #71:
No, I meant anything, with the caveat of "legal" that I added in #64.
I stand by it. There's nothing wrong with working just for the money. If I were independently wealthy, I wouldn't work at all.
I'd be active, but there would be no imperative or clocks involved, thus not "work".
77 - Zedd
Clavos
Let me clarify. Would you prostitute yourself? That is doing ANYTHING for money.
I will do only some things for money not ANYTHING for money.
I would not break my ethics for money. I wouldn't work as a hit man (or woman :o) for money, for instance.
That would be sad.
78 - Clavos
Zedd,
Neither being a hit man nor prostitution are legal (well, prostitution is, in Nevada)...
And, there 's a huge difference between the meaning of:
"doing anything just for the money"
and
"doing anything for money"
Think about it...
79 - MCH
Ninety percent of what Lardbaugh says is purely to make money.
"Really?? Are you sure??? That's awful!! Throw him off the air!!"
- Clavos
Good, I'm glad you agree Lardbaugh is sincere about only 10 percent of everything he says, Clavvy.
80 - Clavos
That's not what I said, emmy.
Don't put words in my mouth.
I merely pointed out the obvious: neither he nor any other talking head is on the air for free; they ALL get paid, BIG bucks. Even the "preachers" and "holy" men.
I wouldn't presume to judge whether Limbaugh (or Franken, or Billy Graham, for that matter) is "sincere".
I don't think their "sincerity" is relevant; they are entertainers.
It's showbiz.
81 - MCH
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.
82 - Mark Andrich
The UK handgun laws came in as a result of the Dunblane massacre. There have been no such killing sprees in the UK since. And while there have ben some spurts in gun crime caused by foreign mafias, gun crime is now falling, along with murders and violent crime - 50 such gun deaths last year in a population of 60 million.
83 - Dave Nalle
Mark, what are you on about? The Dunblane massacre was in 1996. The UK has had strong gun restrictions since the pistol ban in 1903. The Dumblane massacre is generally cited as an example of why gun control doe not work.
They did increase the restrictions in 1997 in response to the Dunblane massacre, but those restrictions are relatively meaningless given the tiny number of people who legally owned firearms before they were enacted. All they did was make it so that the UK shooting team can't even train in the country.
Dave
84 - X: THC
Question Marks...
"This didn't have to happen", Cho Seung-Hui said, after brutally murdering thirty-two people at Virginia Tech University. And this terrible tragedy of sons, daughters, mothers and fathers didn't have to happen, if we'd only listened. But we never listen.
We never listen to those that are different from us- the outcasts, the lonely, the homeless, the ones that are unspoken for. We don't try to understand. We shun them and put them out of our minds because of our fear that we will become like them. And these people become more and more lonely and alienated in their isolation.
Words like "creep", "deranged misfit" and "psycho" devalue this killer's humanity so we don't have to face how similar he is to us. Cries of "how could he have been stopped" are uttered by media quick to sensationalize and gain market share, when the words "how could he have been listened to" are never considered. Because we don't want to listen.
We don't want to hear about loneliness and alienation when we're all so busy with our lives, making money and making friends. And the unpopular, the ones that don't fit in, the lonely ones are ignored or made fun of because we don't care to understand anything about them.
As a boy, Cho Seung-Hui "was picked on, pushed around and laughed at over his shyness" (Associated Press). When he started college, according to the Guardian, "his mother took his dormitory mates to one side to explain about her son's unusual character and implored them to help." And he clearly needed help, devaluing himself so much that he called himself "Question Mark".
There are more "Question Marks" out there. There are millions of them. And if we don't listen to them, they will follow the same path again and again, because people are not connecting. We are becoming more and more disconnected from each other, creating more and more "Question Marks" every day.
Most "Question Marks" don't become murderers. Some just kill themselves. Most harm no one and live just as we do, needing antidepressants to appear what we call "normal". They may be someone you know, someone you love.
This "Question Mark" was once a little boy, who cried, and smiled and loved, He wanted to fit in just like you and I. But that desire to fit in transformed itself into anger towards a society that shunned and ignored him.
How many more times will we shun and ignore the one that doesn't fit in, the one in the corner, the one that's different? When all we have to do is listen, before it's too late. But we won't.
Thirty-two human beings who did not know Cho Seung-Hui were murdered.
They were sons, daughters, fathers and mothers, with dreams of futures that will never come and children that will never be born. The thirty-two leave behind people that love them. People that are now scarred for life by this horrible day of death.
To most of us that have not been directly involved, this tragedy will become a memory and fade like all the others that came before.
And the "Question Marks" will appear with more frequency, again and again, because we don't listen.
We never do.
85 - STM
MJ asked: "So if you stopped getting paid, would you keep doing it?"
I don't get paid for writing on this site, but I still do it. I don't need the exposure, either.
I stopped worrying about that 20 years ago. So the answer is: a resounding Yes.
86 - marcia siegel
i do not believe we should live in fear. however, perhaps we would feel more comfortable if we knew that those who should be protecting had a plan to deal with a serious emergency as this if it were to happen again. we would feel more comfortable if those in charge recognized that this could happen and they had some sort of preparation. also we could feel more comfortable if people that are having problems had some agency they could turn to. likewise people that recognized people having problems on a campus could have a place to report this to where perhaps there could be an intervention of some sort.
87 - Lumpy
THC. Plenty of your persecuted misfit 'question mark' people find ways to live normal lives. Cho was clearly much more than just an innocent victim of bullying.