i overheard someone saying today that perhaps the virginia tech tragedy will be like 9/11 or kennedy's assassination - that is, we'll all remember where we were when we heard about it. i was napping, as it happens, and woke up to a gun control round table on the evening news. it took me a few minutes to figure out what had prompted it (i'd been without media for the morning/afternoon). that initial groggy disconnect has stuck with me, and i've been bewildered and vaguely grossed out for the past day. i was going to post this afternoon about the movies i've been watching for my 101 in 1001 list, but i remembered how i'd been criticized for a personal post on 9/11 ("...how trite and insular she is."). god, i thought, it could be really tasteless to talk about my life right now. never mind, of course, that i have neither a personal angle on what happened nor an expert one on what it means. honestly, is anyone burning to know how someone who blogs about their underwear and house plants feels about a massacre? tonight's american idol began with dimmed lights and ryan seacrest sending goodwill to virginia; that felt selfish to me. i don't need to wear my heart on my sleeve.
at the other end of the spectrum, the television is still full of heads who want to talk politics about the shootings. guns terrify me, and no one - law-abiding citizens, criminals, even law enforcement - would carry them if i had my way, but cranking up the national debate immediately feels a bit selfish, too. maybe i am trite and insular, but i think we should keep our mitts off of those poor people for a while. it's their story.
unfortunately, in my mind there's not much any policy - pro-gun, anti-gun, pro-mental health counseling, etc. - can do to stop someone who is single-mindedly bent on killing other people. but most of us, and especially talking heads, like to think there's a "lesson" somewhere in here that justifies whatever hobbyhorse they're riding. i second you on the guns, though, for what it's worth.
ReplyDeletedoubly unfortunately, the shootings have totally overwhelmed what should be the big (and shitty) news of the day - the supreme court decision on so-called "partial-birth abortion." which, you know, is a policy with serious consequences.
the dean at uci sent out an email about the "incident", which seemed strange to me because i didn't hear about it until about 8 o'clock at night and there's a sort of distance that occurs when you hear about tragic news 10 hours later--it became, for me, difficult to absorb with the same sort of intensity 9/11 (which, by the way, i find difficult to see the two on an equal playing field).
ReplyDeletemy disgust rose as i watched larry king and listened to AM radio spoke-holes play out the various blame games. "whose fault is it? the police? the school?" really? you want to go there? if only the "people in charge" could predict the future as well as the news media that reports the events that occur...
L: I'm with you on the heart-on-sleeve thing--particularly because it is a handy substitute for actually doing something. Exhibit A: Bush paying homage to troops. It's nice and all, but maybe he could actually do something to help them like, oh, I don't know, making sure the vets living in hospitals are undisturbed by rats and cockroaches. (Too many Dems are just as culpable for this sort of thing, certainly.)
ReplyDeleteLip service like this is up there with fake apologies, and canned officials needing to spend more time with their families / having a personal issue that they need to address (at a plush detox center, of course) as things that just drive me insane.
Trying this again. Sorry if it gets posted five times.
ReplyDeleteI think the frantic search for causes stems from the fact that the perpetrators of "school shootings" are children, or considered to be children -- this guy was 23, sure, but it still follows the "school" pattern -- and we're collectively supposed to be able to control children's behavior. These mass murders don't get filed under "violent crime" by the media; they get filed under "extremely naughty children." Whenever a child is naughty, we feel more or less required to blame someone else: the parents, the neighborhood, "the authorities," the media, etc. It may be that the lesson from this, and from Columbine, and from the shootings in Minnesota and Alabama (?) and Oregon and elsewhere, is simply that a) you can't always control children and b) you can't always hold other people accountable for what they do. That is doubly true for a 23-year-old college student. Even the guns are ultimately a red herring.