April 17th, 2007

Oh, THAT’S why he killed 32 people

By Anthony Marek

Yesterday’s shooting at Virginia Tech must have really put things in perspective. No matter how much of a bad day you thought you were having, you certainly felt like a world-class jerk after reading the news.

I wasn’t really old enough to analyze the Columbine massacre when it went down a day before my birthday in 1999 — I was an adolescent probably too preoccupied with the loot I’d rack up the following day.

Isn’t it interesting how the media oozes this horrendous biography of the killers when things like this happen? I know more about this 23-year-old South Korean nobody than I know about most of my professors. His roommate describes him as a loner, he lived in the VT dorms, he may have been taking medication for depression, and, something that is getting way too much play, he wrote “violent” plays.

I can’t think of any reason that the media would toss all of this at us, except for some perverted attempt at explaining what he was thinking or dealing with.

Newspapers know their readers demand it, so that’s why they print it — they really don’t have a choice in the matter. But trying to place their readers in the shooter’s shoes is awfully hard to do without giving the appearance of apologizing for him, or worse, blaming the victims — the latter of which John Derbyshire of the National Review has no qualms in doing:

Where was the spirit of self-defense here? Setting aside the ludicrous campus ban on licensed conceals, why didn’t anyone rush the guy? It’s not like this was Rambo, hosing the place down with automatic weapons. He had two handguns for goodness’ sake—one of them reportedly a .22.

An Australian newspaper, the Daily Telegraph ponders in print, “This is the face of the girl who may have sparked the worst school shooting in U.S. history.” (Heart-wrenching photo of the deceased girl included.)

Naturally, the shooter himself was the last to assume culpability for his romp of terror: “You caused me do to this,” read his suicide note. He was an English major, by the way.

So he took or Prozac or something like it. So he wrote a violent play. Fascinating stuff.

It doesn’t connect any dots, of course. Dozens of English majors, this will shock you to know, get through each day writing violent books and plays and movies, without going on real life killing sprees. Depression medication has got to work for a plurality of those to whom it is prescribed, otherwise it would have gone the way of Fen-Phen and Vioxx by now.

Conversely, I’m sure a good share of criminals didn’t write blood-soaked one-act plays or suffer from depression (or live in a dormitory at the ripe age of 23).

Bottom line is, I’ve got to think that with every pointless bit of information that is released about this guy, the victims and their families suffer that much more. I much prefer to refer to 32 dead victims, not 33, and it is no accident that the killer’s name has not been used in this post.

He was the lowliest coward there is, and deserves to be forgotten. That’s it.

My sympathies to the victims and anyone touched by yesterday’s tragedy.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 17th, 2007 at 8:57 pm and is filed under Opinion, That's What He Said. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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