32 dead, 17 hospitalized with gunshot wounds in Blacksburg, VA. All the facts aren’t in yet, but it looks as if it may have all started with relationships gone sour. An enraged student at VA Tech murders two students in a dorm, then goes on a rampage until he runs out of steam or fury or ammo and kills himself.
My thirty-one year old daughter lives in Virginia. Erin is employed by the school district, a color guard instructor for a high school band. She’s called home a dozen times since the tragedy at VA Tech, weeping over the senselessness of it, concerned for the safety of students and teachers everywhere, incensed that a deeply troubled college student could get his hands on guns–one of them a semi-automatic 9mm Glock.
She has two little girls, one in school already, the other entering kindergarten in the fall. She is afraid for them. ”What’s happening to us, Mama?” Erin sobs. “This is not the way things were when I was in school–kids didn’t kill kids! Now it’s everywhere–Paducah, Columbine, here–”
How do you answer a question like that? What do you say to a young woman who was raised in a gun-free home, to one whose mother wouldn’t allow a water pistol in the house unless it looked like something other than a handgun?
What I had to say to her was of little comfort.
It’s about hate, I told her. It’s about rage and intolerance and the glorification of indecent behavior through indecent language. American anger has been elevated to an art form. It’s all around us, all the time. Gratuitously violent movies, TV and video games that desensitize our children to viciousness and blood-letting. We see it, hear it on television and radio talk shows–and some of it maquerades as news. As commentary.
Don Imus calling a respected black female journalist a “cleaning lady,” the Rutgers women’s basketball team “nappy headed hos.” Rush Limbaugh smearing “Feminazis,” Mexicans, Asians, ridiculing Michael J. Fox’s physical deficits, calling Barack Obama a “Halfrican American.” Ann Coulter calling John Edwards a “faggot,” Arabs “ragheads” and all liberals traitors to their country. Bill O’Reilly calling Mexicans “wetbacks.” Michael Savage screaming “Go get AIDS and die!” to a gay caller on his radio program. Senator Hillary Clinton called names like “slut” or “bitch” or “whore”–none of which has a thing to do with her voting record or policy matters. Professed religious leaders Robertson and Falwell saying we should assassinate Hugo Chavez for making speeches critical of the U.S., saying Ariel Sharon’s massive stroke was God’s revenge because Sharon proposed sharing Israeli land with Palestinians for peace in the Middle East, saying 9/11 could be blamed on “feminists, homosexuals and abortionists.” A president whose “born again” philosophy includes murderous military pre-emptive strikes against a sovereign nation based on false premises, demonizing entire countries, and refusing to speak to our “enemies” because they are “evil.” Presidential hopeful John McCain trivializing the concept of war, making it “cute”–singing “Bomb, bomb, bomb–bomb, bomb Iran!” to the tune of “Barbara Ann” in a public speech.
Even perky, All-American Katie Couric, after using plagiarized material as her “own” experience on CBS News, sinks to doing a segment perpetuating the myth that Barack Obama attended a suspect militant Islamic school as a boy–well after CNN, AP and ABC News investigated and debunked the story.
There’s a culture of violent sexism/racism in some of the music/music videos our kids are buying.
And all of this is aired. All of it broadcast to millions of Americans. Many of them kids. Some of them troubled kids.
Hear enough of it and it becomes normal. It’s okay. It’s cool. It’s God’s will. It corrupts our culture, gives us permission to wallow in our every hateful thought, feeds every sick, vile impulse we have. It gives us leave to act out our basest aggressions. Guns are glorified. They have the power to “protect” us. To solve our problems. They’re too easy to get, too easily concealed. They’re everywhere.
It’s a lethal combination, rage and guns. And as long as we see something sacred in our inviolable, constitutional right to spew violent racist, sexist, intolerant rhetoric and “bear arms,” I have no answer for my daughter or my grandchildren. Except to say that something’s got to change. And soon.
Laura,
I wish I could tell you my “theory on hate” was only a rhetorical exercise, a way to make a larger point by, say, overstating the linkage between the media’s decline into shock value programming for political pandering or for the hard cash earned from airing extremist pontificators.
But I can’t.
It’s like watching/hearing a train wreck. The public is fascinated by it.
As the horrific story at VA Tech unfolded–in gory detail and in a continuous loop–all I could think was how complicit the media has become in the marketing of madness.
After I’d written the post and moved on to other things–like the coming week’s newspaper column–NBC sank lower yet, airing every posed, titillating photo that poor sick Cho sent them, playing his video, quoting his manifesto. Over and over and over again.
They have made a celebrity of a mentally ill kid, a role model for other troubled kids who see both a way to “get even” and to get “famous.” Imagine the temptation in this for an isolated, alienated youth who finds his own “reality” an intolerable one. He can star in his own RAMBO, get the attention he’s desperate to have, go out in a blaze of glory–and, at last, everyone will have to listen to him. Everyone will know his name.
It’s not about censorship or the First Amendment. It’s about responsible behavior on the part of the “adults” in the media. A tragically adolescent mindset seems to have won the airwaves–shock and awe. And profit– a bigger allowance.
Someone has to make the hard choice here. To grow up.
First and foremost… I *am* the daughter living in Virginia with the two (beautiful!!) little girls that Linda writes about – and I am PROUD to call this fine writer and advocate for Barack Obama my mom.
I live only a little over an hour from Tech. I am the color guard instructor at a local high school – there are kids at Tech who have marched on a band field for me, hugged and celebrated victories with me, cried and traded email addresses and phone numbers on graduation day. Bright, wonderful, pieces of hope to those of us in a world that all too often finds us confronted with gang violence and hate, pregnant teens and angst. You meet these kids and you hold out a hope for our future – that tomorrow is going to be brighter because of the young adults like these. And then you see them again… still pictures of bloodied, lifeless bodies being hauled from an institution of learning… a hope-filled face from a student ID… an angry gun-whelding sick young man…all of them an unfulfilled promise… And there are those out there who would DEFEND the media? The very ones who glorify the deeds of a young man like Cho by broadcasting his words? Why isn’t the media holding someone accountable? Someone OTHER than the young men who shared a suite with Cho. I actually sat and watched in utter disgust as Chris Matthews got indignant with one of Cho’s suitemates for not “knowing something was off” with Cho and warning someone… not railing at a lobbiest for the NRA for fighting and bribing to keep firearms all too accessible… not bringing on members of our House, our Senat and holding them accountable for the things they’ve done – or failed to do – to keep us and our children safe… and CERTAINLY not shaking his head in disgust at the fact that HIS own news organization, NBC, didn’t simply turn over the packet that came from Cho to the authorities, NOOOO… they first made copies of the pictures and video — I mean, we have to think ratings first, right?
I want more for my children – THAT is why I am a political junkie and why I cry over elections… why I get that here-we-go-again feeling about our bought and paid for administration when I see “our” president find it necessary to defend our “right to bear arms” when he made his first public statement of his own personal “shock and awe” — heaven forbid he piss off the NRA.
We DO need a change… we MUST have a change. I look at Barack Obama and see our country’s chance for redemption.