Posted on 07/26/2012 11:49:02 AM PDT by Kaslin
This is not a good week to be a journalist.
Watching the massive 24/7 coverage of the massacre in Aurora, Colo., coverage that will only serve to inspire some future twisted male mind to seek infamy -- to die hated but not unnoticed -- one cannot help but be disgusted.
As journalists, it's understood to be our duty to do things like call up a mother in San Diego to inform her that her son killed 12 people, all so we can then report endlessly on what her cryptic response means or did not mean.
Airtime must be filled; an explanation must be found.
The movie theater mass murderer was a child of upper-middle class, educated, affluent and apparently loving parents, with an umblemished record. In high school he was somewhat quiet, but had a circle of close friends. By graduate school, he appears to be always alone, but still smiling, polite, helpful. He studied the neurological roots of mental illness.
If you must speculate, it sounds a lot like schizophrenia, which typically emerges in late adolescence or young adulthood.
But what does that explain, when 99.9999 percent of schizophrenics never pick up a gun and murder anyone?
There is no good answer to the question, "Why?"
We desperately search for some explanation, some pattern, so we can bring order into chaos, so we can protect ourselves from fear, pronounce somehow confidently "never again."
If we end bullying, or pass some gun laws, or --whatever -- evil will be purged from our midst.
But the only answer to the problem of suffering is the one that God gave Job. Job asked "Why?" and God did not offer any explanation. He simply said, "I am," and Job was comforted.
The only comfort in the midst of evil is the presence of God and/or of His fruit, which is goodness.
Whether we believe in God or not, this is the essence of faith: In the midst of all the visible evil, we affirm that good is stronger than evil, that love is better and more real than hate and horror.
And, yes, through the media frenzy, the fundamental decency of the people of Aurora shone like a beacon. Mayor Steve Hogan urged us to focus on the victims and the heroes, and to refuse to allow the city of Aurora to be defined by the transitory horrible evil in its midst.
On MSNBC, journalists asked Jordan Ghawi, the brother of Aurora victim Jessica Ghawi, to pontificate on gun-control laws. He refused. On his website, he wrote that he was doing interviews to bring attention to Jessica and the other victims: "Going to continue to give interviews until the victims' names are remembered and not the coward of a shooter." Jordan urged us all not to mention the killer's name.
On Fox News, another news personality tried as hard as she could to get a teenage female victim, shot in the face, to express her primal emotions against the shooter because, well, viewers enjoy such displays. "I don't want to stoop to his pathetic level," this teenage girl said. The dignity this child-woman displayed!
Three men died taking bullets for their girlfriends. Stephanie Davis kept her fingers tight around the neck wound of her friend Allie Young, rather than flee the theater. Countless first responders rushed into unknown danger, with a killer still on the loose.
A 14-year-old boy named Prodeo et Patria (it means "For God and country") was shot in the back and escaped the theater; he then went back inside to rescue his mother and father. While there, he stayed behind to help a wounded stranger escape as well.
He's an immigrant from Indonesia, by the way.
Maybe there are some lessons to be learned from Aurora: Get the face and the name of the killer off the front page. Focus on the victims and the community that loved them and rallies on their behalf. And above all, give us the heroes, the lights in the darkness of horror and evil.
Not so much because they deserve it, but because we need them.
I stopped right there. When did Maggie go over to the dark side, misandrony wise? She always seemed like a decent type before, I guess I had her "figured wrong."
Apart from the fact that the shooter is male, you have a point.
Every blogger, pundit, journalist, and commentator within reach of a keyboard feels compelled offer obligatory musings about the murders in Aurora.
It might be that Holmes sent the package to someone at the university hoping that he could somehow make the university culpable financially, as in lawsuits against the university for not taking steps to stop him. If he had recently failed an important exam he might have been angry and wanted to strike out at the school and administrators.
He carefully planned the whole thing, including booby-trapping his apartment, to kill or wound as many people as possible. If that was his motive, he is just plain evil.
I fail to see how the addition of that word amplified her points. Maybe I’m just stoopit.
He did send a notebook on July 12, to a professor at the university with drawings and details of the attack. Unfortunately the notebook was discovered after the attack. I understand it is not certain if it was his professor or not, but if the notebook had been discovered before the attack it could have been prevented. Also it was reported this morning, that he wasn’t as smart he was thought to be and the reason why he dropped out was because he failed
Joke’s downstairs neighbor said that blaring techno music went from midnight to 1am many nights. Sounded like it was automatic to me.
I think the apt was booby-trapped then. The music could’ve been a lure to kill cops. Since that failed (nobody came or called the cops), perhaps that’s why joke went to the theater on a rampage.....
On the one hand, almost all (if not all) mass-shooting perpetrators are men. On the other hand, Maggie has had some poor relationship experiences, leaving some baggage.
As a conservative, she’s very hit-or-miss. She favors New York’s trans-fats ban because she thinks they’re such a hugh threat that people shouldn’t have choices. And she favors government involvement in health insurance because her insurance company didn’t unquestioningly cover the latest, most expensive drugs for her Type 2 diabetes.
An indisputable fact. But I find her gratuitous swipe insulting just the same. Why does it not surprise me she has had "relationship problems" in the past? And the diabetes thing doesn't surprise me either. She is F-A-T.
She used to be pretty good, but she's really become, as you say, hit-or-miss over the past decade or so.
That's reasonable. It was not necessary information: we know the current perp is male, and the identity of future ones is unknown. Women are changing trends in many area.
The adjective came from the heart, a little dig in a context where she can easily say, "But it's accurate ...".
A dark heart it must be. And she used to have such great columns about family issues. I am not surprised you would be familiar with her work.
There were more than a few, and probably will be more.
It's a little like people saying that the "profile" of serial killers indicated that they'd be White.
Well, most were White because the large majority of the population was White, but as the demographics of the general population change so do the demographics of serial killers.
I've been reading her stuff since she first appeared as an editorial intern in "National Review." She's a skilled writer, although the brief-column format isn't her strength, and she's a very good social analyst, putting data together accurately and using well-chosen and relevant examples.
I think something happens to conservatives who live in New York too long. What reasonable "conservative," even in the seething stew of FR - where any definition of "conservative" breaks down once the second person opines - would say, "Because my insurance company is not providing the most expensive drugs available for a lifestyle-related medical condition, we must have government force everyone to pay for my drugs."? A conservative would say, "Pay cash then!" and unless he or she were incredibly charitable, would add, "Take the cost out of your food budget."
If that 75 year old guy from the Florida internet cafe was in the theater, maybe only a few are shot instead of 70.
Well maybe, but don’t forget that the criminal threw teargas canisters before he started shooting
I don’t think he misunderstood the point at all. However, by inserting “male” in there, the author distracts us from her point, by betraying her assumption that the next crazed shoot must be male, since she probably thinks it’s something in males’ nature that causes this behavior.
I really don’t see how anybody could have gotten a clear shot off in a dark, smoke filled auditorium. If I were there and carrying, I can’t say for sure I could have stopped this. I’ll go down before I shoot an innocent.
I felt the same way about the shooting in Tucson (of the Congresswoman), and that was in broad daylight. There was no way to get a clear shot, and there *were* people carrying. One of the guys pinning the idiot down was carrying, and never pulled his weapon. When asked about it, he said when he finally had an opportunity, the guy was under control. It would have been murder.
Ok, I can see that point.
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