3736

Noonan knows

the press, and she really laid it out in Week-end edition of WSJ in "Cold Standard." In describing how common sense has broken down in many areas of our lives, particulary the mental health gurus uprooting the walls that used to protect us and then blaming someone else,

"The literally white-bearded academic who was head of the campus counseling center was on Paula Zahn Wednesday night suggesting the utter incompetence of officials to stop a man who had stalked two women, set a fire in his room, written morbid and violent plays and poems, been expelled from one class, and been declared by a judge to be "mentally ill" was due to the lack of a government "safety net." In a news conference, he decried inadequate "funding for mental health services in the United States." Way to take responsibility. Way to show the kids how to dodge."

the politicizing of every tragedy and event, and the Bush derangement syndrome,

"The anxiety of our politicians that there may be an issue that goes unexploited was almost--almost--comic. They mean to seem sensitive, and yet wind up only stroking their supporters. I believe Rep. Jim Moran was first out of the gate with the charge that what Cho did was President Bush's fault. I believe Sen. Barack Obama was second, equating the literal killing of humans with verbal coarseness. Wednesday there was Sen. Barbara Boxer equating the violence of the shootings with the "global warming challenge" and "today's Supreme Court decision" upholding a ban on partial-birth abortion."

culminating with the inexcusable actions that NBC took (and other networks followed) to allow Cho to glorify his insanity,

"Brian Williams introduced the Cho collection as "what can only be described as a multi-media manifesto." But it can be described in other ways. "The self-serving meanderings of a crazy, self-indulgent narcissist" is one. But if you called it that, you couldn't lead with it. You couldn't rationalize the decision. Such pictures are inspiring to the unstable. The minute you saw them, you probably thought what I did: We'll be seeing more of that."

For some reason Noonan chose not to list among the demise of common sense Cho's course work in literature (and I'm guessing other humanities and social sciences), might have included the bizarre twisting of every thing that might be positive in western literature and history (it did when I was on campus in the 90s). This is one area of his ramblings which pretty much reflected what he was being taught in college.* For that, one only needs to open a syllabus of a freshman lit or history course to find the poison that will rot a young, unstable mind, and turn off a health one.

*You can fulfill an English requirement by studying movie Westerns, or gangsterism in hip hop music, or sexuality in disabled women or probably even the fantasy life of your professor if you make a good case. It's ideology before thinking and politics before craft.

3733 Many conservative bloggers are rude

to their peer bloggers on the left. They call them names like moonbats and wingnuts, change their surnames, i.e., Moore and Moran might become Moron, disparage their 19th century Marxist reasoning, or bully them for having no reasoning at all, point out the failed socialist programs that undergird their solutions, ridicule them for misleading the poor to get votes for the Democrats, post unflattering cartoons of leftists or videos of mumbled speeches that go nowhere, and upload photos showing lines and wrinkles on has-been senators or a covered humble head of an attractive Californian visiting a dictator. For shame!

Yesterday I was reading a media site for information on new and discontinued magazines for my other, other, other blog. And I discovered they keep an eye on Rush Limbaugh, excerpt part of his monologue, and put it out like raw meat for the wild dog, scavenger bloggers. There were two obvious errors, both of omission, in what was posted, because I was listening to that show.

First, Rush had either seen or been sent the information from the website at VA Tech (said it was in the English Dept. site). He quoted some of it, apparently not realizing it was from Nikki Giovanni's poem read at the memorial service--at least he never mentioned it. The poem included the usual concern for the poor, dispossessed, and baby elephants who also don't ask for their fate and the violence done to them.* Rush then went on to comment, that based on Cho's manifesto which railed against the rich and the bullies and the fact that he'd been in this English class, the only conclusion was that he was a liberal. Rush parodies the left all the time (knowing they have no sense of humor), and although this was not said to be funny, it was said to be ironic (left also has a problem with irony), and to juxtapose a madman's ramblings with the marxist, deconstructionist blather that passes for literature and writing courses on our campuses of higher education.

Second, most of his program yesterday was devoted not to Cho, but to his favorite charity, leukemia research. He has raised approximately $17 million dollars in the last 17 years devoting just a few hours of air time one afternoon a year. His listeners contribute, but this year he personally was donating over $300,000. I doubt that any left of center media watch organization or left wing blogger ever mentions this, choosing instead to pull several sentences out of his monologue, and not mentioning the context in which it was said. Then that fuels the fanatics who don't do their own listening and research.

*from Giovanni's address: "We do not understand this tragedy. We know we did nothing to deserve it, but neither does a child in Africa dying of AIDS, neither do the invisible children walking the night away to avoid being captured by the rogue army, neither does the baby elephant watching his community being devastated for ivory, neither does the Mexican child looking for fresh water, neither does the Appalachian infant killed in the middle of the night in his crib in the home his father built with his own hands being run over by a boulder because the land was destabilized. No one deserves a tragedy."

3731

Dear Bill O'Reilly,

Your using the Cho clips while discussing whether it was gratuitous, was ridiculous. We are regular watchers of your show, but this is a story you bungled.

Bill's note to me:

"Dear Valued Visitor,

Thank you for contacting the Customer Service Team at BillOReilly.com.

[publicizing his show]

Sorry, but due to the overwhelming volume of emails, we are unable to respond to specific show content questions for The O'Reilly Factor."

I'll bet you are.

3722

What do you think of NBC's behavior

The murderer gets his wish for immortality--NBC complies, and all the other media fall in line and once out, it will never die on the internet. When I bring up my RR homepage, his ugly face and the tape is there.

A foul mouthed Don Imus MSNBC hired to say outrageous things gets fired for doing what he was hired to do. He says "nappy headed hos. A man who murders over 30 people sends NBC taped rants and then uses NBC to tell his story to the world. Same network. I'm trying to think of as many synonyms as possible for the executives of NBC (and Fox, ABC and CBS and cable affiliates) who made the decision to play the Cho images over and over and over. These words describe NBC, the main newsperp, not Cho.

money driven

bottom liners

bottom feeders

profit motivated

power besotted

goof ups

disgusting

bumblers

bunglers

shallow

muddled thinking

screw ups

rotten

fetid

odious

vile

four letter word for bottom discharge

irrational

atrocious

outrageous

scandalous

unrestrained

merciless

undignified

disrespectful to families of victims

unprincipled

brutal

barbarous

repugnant

loathsome

evil

troubled

disturbed

creepy

careless

duplicitous

rotten

Politicizing the tragedy

Within minutes of the news of the shootings at VA Tech, the terrible tragedy was being politicized on both the left and the right, by the talking heads, the talk show hosts, the blogs, the politicians. The poor parents hadn't even been notified yet--they were still trying to call their dead children, and we had started a very angry, politically charged "conversation" about gun control, American culture, "we" and "we're all to blame." Rosie O'Donnell and other hot shots have a private security force to protect them, so we know she'll call for gun control for others--that's what left wing entertainers do. But it was equally upsetting to hear the conservative talk hosts railing against the lefties who they believe are trying to bring them down with this issue, and then second guessing the police investigation of the first murders in the dorm. The blame game was unbelieveable. I feel so sorry for the school officials who never ever thought they would be facing a carnage like this. A pox on both houses. As I understand the laws of Virginia, the murderer had done everything legal. I think the college administration and the police who must have faced a scene most would only see in war or horror movies have behaved with honor and dignity. No one would ask a city of 30,000 to secure a shut down after a murder or have cameras in every building, but that's what people are shouting now! Let the parents at least bury their children before you get on the soap box for your favorite cause.

This man, as it now turns out, was criminally insane. You don't pass legislation or make grand judgements about an entire nation because an insane college student has fantasies, is paranoid, or is a psycopath--and consumed with or by evil. What we may need to look at, instead of gun control, is our privacy laws and disability laws which have put many of us in danger both from disease and people who can't control their minds or take their medication.

3714

Teach the Swarm Technique

"Youngsters in a suburban Fort Worth school district are being taught not to sit there like good boys and girls with their hands folded if a gunman invades the classroom, but to rush him and hit him with everything they have: books, pencils, legs and arms.

"Getting under desks and praying for rescue from professionals is not a recipe for success," said Robin Browne, a major in the British Army reserve force and an instructor for Response Options, the company providing the training to the Burleson schools."

Story here from Oct. 2006.

Then the program was cancelled in a few months because parents didn't like it.

3713

A very sad interview

A young man from a counseling center--Christian or new age or secular, couldn't tell--was interviewed in Blacksburg today by Diane Sawyer and Robin Roberts about how to counsel the parents and children in the aftermath of yesterday's shooting. Of course, he had no answers--who would? But he could have offered something positive and hopeful. He was either muzzled, tongue tied, or didn't know the Biblical truth that there is evil and sin in this world and that God has a plan. He stumbled around in some theological quicksand about "free will," but that was about as far as he got, and Robin even had to throw him a few prompts. Some students, however, knew the source of comfort.

3712

The aftermath thoughts

So many news reporters are filling air space about the VA Tech tragedy with phrases like "make sense of" or "moving on," or "what went wrong." The rush to judgement lesson of the Duke case has had no affect on these talking heads. They question why the police and administrators or even the victims didn't do this or that. Or whether recent handgun legislation worsed the situation. Or why the technology of jammed cell phones failed. The families of these children will never makes sense of or move on. Two of my sons died over 40 years ago and there's a part of our life that will forever be stuck in a time warp because even their not being here is a reminder that they aren't here. Like that Edna St. Vincent Millay poem.

There are a hundred places where I fear
To go, -- so with his memory they brim!
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say, "There is no memory of him here!"
And so stand stricken, so remembering him!
But I want to address the deaths of some other young people. Ben Stein commented in Terror in our Midst (and I haven't checked his statistics) that since 9-11 when 3,000 people died in a terrorist attack, 40,000 deaths have occurred due to gang killings--many innocent bystanders, but most are black and hispanic young men killing their own kind. These young people had families and friends too. Same age group--very different past and future.

The Imus double standard comes to mind. If the media reports what these young people are doing, they will be called racist for reporting negative things about minorities and immigrants. But aren't they racist and irresponsible if they don't? Doesn't that leave them with nothing to earn their living except Anna Nicole Smith and anti-Administration diatribes? Talk about the failure of law enforcement or security. Don't those neighborhoods deserve some safety too? Is it too hard for Chris Matthews or Diane Sawyer to go on location? Or how about Terry Moran who is such a class warfare expert. Give them combat pay and put the MSM on the front lines.