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sabotabbySorry to post about the you-know-whats that happened you-know-where, but I'm doing so in the service of making a Margaret-Wente-is-an-asshat post. So there.
Wente has conveniently provided us all with The Definitive Link between the [Bad Dog-Eating Model Immigrants] and the [Bad Sand-People]*. That's right—Cho shot up VTech not because of mental illness, American gun culture, video games, or even Marilyn Manson, but as part of the jihad! (Even though he was a Christian, apparently.)
The link is here, but it requires a subscription.
His 15 minutes of fame
Monday's mass murderer styled himself a jihadist complete with martyr video, says MARGARET WENTE
Many malevolent influences have been cited in the twisting of the mind of Cho Seung-Hui, including violent video games, Quentin Tarantino movies and a 2003 South Korean splatter flick called Oldboy (which was much beloved of European critics).
That's a horrible sentence in pretty much every way. Does anyone edit these columns?
But it's obvious that Monday's mass murderer styled himself as a jihadist. He even left a martyr video, in which he posed with military garb and guns. In it, the holy warrior is supposed to explain his reasons for planning his attack on the infidel. The martyr video is meant to be an inspiration to others, and to publicize his heroic self-sacrifice.
Actual Cho QuoteTM "Thanks to you I die like Jesus Christ, to inspire generations of the weak and the defenceless people." Source.
Well, it sure did get him airtime.
I'm sure he appreciated watching it from the Big Flatscreen in the Sky, in between deflowering 72 Virginians or whatever.
Don't blame NBC for taking the bait. Any other network would have too. The CBC refused to touch it, claiming higher moral ground, but I think the CBC was wrong. The video had real value. It proved the killer really was a demented nut.
It proved that the CBC has class. <3 <3 <3
Not that NBC did not exploit its little scoop. Before it decided to "restrain" its video excerpts to no more than six minutes out of every hour, the network milked its exclusive video through the evening news cycle and slapped its peacock logo on every single frame, so that all the broadcasters and newspapers in the world (except the CBC) would have to run pictures labelled "NBC News." Now that's branding!
I can't figure out whether she thinks this is cool or not. Since she's an evil capitalist, though, I'm going to guess that she thinks it's cool.
By Thursday, the victims' families and the students at Virginia Tech had had enough. "VT stay strong, media stay away," said a huge handmade sign. And who could blame them? For them, the martyr video was a fresh assault -- and a trigger for the media hordes to descend all over again, like so many vampires bent on sucking the last drop of blood from the story.
Several psychologists (interviewed on rival networks) condemned the video's widespread play. One called it a "social catastrophe," and, like CBC editor-in-chief Tony Burman, warned that it might trigger copycat crimes. "If anybody cares about the victims in Blacksburg and if anybody cares about their children, stop showing this video now. Take it off the Internet. Let it be relegated to YouTube," the psychologist said.
Because no one watches YouTube ever.
Well, that would be the problem, would it not? So long as it's on YouTube, who cares who else does or doesn't run it? For that matter, who needs videos of murderers ranting at you when you can download videos of real beheadings any old time? Anyone with homicidal leanings doesn't need to go far for inspiration. Our culture sickeningly glorifies fictional sadism and death. But the wonders of technology have put real torture and real death at the fingertips of anybody with a modem.
Wente, however, has never glorified violence.
Any random massacre is like a Rorschach test. People use it to project a political or social point of view.
The difference is that Wente gets paid for it.
The Columbine murders were blamed on broken homes, lack of parent-child interaction, day care, sex and violence on TV, Dungeons and Dragons, spoiled children, abortion, school bullying, intolerance and marginalization of less popular students by more popular ones and, of course, gun culture.
Guess which of these theories were advanced by crazy people?
The Blacksburg massacre is no different. As you might expect, the British papers are full of stories about the aspirational U.S. culture (which allegedly punishes losers) and its trigger-happy ways. "Perhaps the pressure of being an outsider had become too much," guesses one journalist. "The son of South Korean immigrants who came to the U.S. in 1992 in search of the American dream, Cho was railing against the rich." Indeed he was. But the writer doesn't bother to explain how Cho's sister, also presumably an outsider, managed to graduate from Princeton and get a job with the State Department.
Your challenge is to name three women who've gone on shooting sprees by the time you hit the end of this article. And...go!
America's toxic culture also comes in for a licking from Bob Herbert of the New York Times, who claims the country is fundamentally misogynist and homophobic. "Violence is commonly resorted to as the antidote to the disturbing emotions raised by the widespread hostility toward women in our society and the pathological fear of so many men that they aren't quite tough enough," he opines. "The confluence of feelings of inadequacy, psychosexual turmoil and the easy availability of guns has resulted in a staggering volume of murders in this country." Actually, the murder rate has been in steep decline. But why let the facts get in the way of a good rant?
"Gosh, Margaret, I can't think of a single woman who's done that."
My own view is that America is not so bad a place to be a woman and/or immigrant and/or gay.
Hahaha hahah haha oh wait she's serious.
Mr. Cho appears to have suffered from a disorder that inclined him to act in bizarre and dysfunctional ways. The modern world offers such people a variety of ways to shape and justify their homicidal fantasies. He chose jihadism.
Um, no. He chose to shoot up a school.
Some of his video ranting even echos jihadist denunciations of the decadent West. "You've had everything you wanted," he raved. "Your Mercedes wasn't enough, you brat. Your golden necklaces weren't enough, you snobs. Your trust fund wasn't enough. Your vodka and cognac weren't enough. All your debaucheries weren't enough to fulfill your hedonistic needs."
Oh, speaking of vodka, is it TOO SOON to make Boris Yelstin jokes?
In some places, it doesn't take a madman to kill you for moral corruption. Perhaps it's sheer coincidence, but in Iran this week, the country's supreme court overturned the murder convictions of six members of an Islamic paramilitary force -- male vigilantes in their 20s -- who went around massacring people they considered immoral and debauched. (Among their victims were an unmarried couple who had been caught in public holding hands.) The killers put some of their victims in pits and stoned them to death. Some were suffocated. One man was buried alive, and the bodies of others were dumped in the desert to be eaten by wild animals. I have a feeling they're not that fond of homosexuals either.
So, are these the death squads we support, or the death squads we're against? I can never keep track.
Which is more frightening -- one insane young man with a gun, or an insane regime with an army of young men to do its bidding?
I agree, but if the Americans impeached Bush, they'd get stuck with Cheney.
Personally, I'd pick the one that wasn't on TV.
That doesn't even make sense.
mwente@globeandmail.com
So you can e-mail her to complain about her using the deaths of 32 innocent people as an excuse to bash Iran.
EDIT: It's unfortunate that I found Wente Watch only after it ended.
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lopukhov
Wente has conveniently provided us all with The Definitive Link between the [Bad Dog-Eating Model Immigrants] and the [Bad Sand-People]*. That's right—Cho shot up VTech not because of mental illness, American gun culture, video games, or even Marilyn Manson, but as part of the jihad! (Even though he was a Christian, apparently.)
The link is here, but it requires a subscription.
His 15 minutes of fame
Monday's mass murderer styled himself a jihadist complete with martyr video, says MARGARET WENTE
Many malevolent influences have been cited in the twisting of the mind of Cho Seung-Hui, including violent video games, Quentin Tarantino movies and a 2003 South Korean splatter flick called Oldboy (which was much beloved of European critics).
That's a horrible sentence in pretty much every way. Does anyone edit these columns?
But it's obvious that Monday's mass murderer styled himself as a jihadist. He even left a martyr video, in which he posed with military garb and guns. In it, the holy warrior is supposed to explain his reasons for planning his attack on the infidel. The martyr video is meant to be an inspiration to others, and to publicize his heroic self-sacrifice.
Actual Cho QuoteTM "Thanks to you I die like Jesus Christ, to inspire generations of the weak and the defenceless people." Source.
Well, it sure did get him airtime.
I'm sure he appreciated watching it from the Big Flatscreen in the Sky, in between deflowering 72 Virginians or whatever.
Don't blame NBC for taking the bait. Any other network would have too. The CBC refused to touch it, claiming higher moral ground, but I think the CBC was wrong. The video had real value. It proved the killer really was a demented nut.
It proved that the CBC has class. <3 <3 <3
Not that NBC did not exploit its little scoop. Before it decided to "restrain" its video excerpts to no more than six minutes out of every hour, the network milked its exclusive video through the evening news cycle and slapped its peacock logo on every single frame, so that all the broadcasters and newspapers in the world (except the CBC) would have to run pictures labelled "NBC News." Now that's branding!
I can't figure out whether she thinks this is cool or not. Since she's an evil capitalist, though, I'm going to guess that she thinks it's cool.
By Thursday, the victims' families and the students at Virginia Tech had had enough. "VT stay strong, media stay away," said a huge handmade sign. And who could blame them? For them, the martyr video was a fresh assault -- and a trigger for the media hordes to descend all over again, like so many vampires bent on sucking the last drop of blood from the story.
Several psychologists (interviewed on rival networks) condemned the video's widespread play. One called it a "social catastrophe," and, like CBC editor-in-chief Tony Burman, warned that it might trigger copycat crimes. "If anybody cares about the victims in Blacksburg and if anybody cares about their children, stop showing this video now. Take it off the Internet. Let it be relegated to YouTube," the psychologist said.
Because no one watches YouTube ever.
Well, that would be the problem, would it not? So long as it's on YouTube, who cares who else does or doesn't run it? For that matter, who needs videos of murderers ranting at you when you can download videos of real beheadings any old time? Anyone with homicidal leanings doesn't need to go far for inspiration. Our culture sickeningly glorifies fictional sadism and death. But the wonders of technology have put real torture and real death at the fingertips of anybody with a modem.
Wente, however, has never glorified violence.
Any random massacre is like a Rorschach test. People use it to project a political or social point of view.
The difference is that Wente gets paid for it.
The Columbine murders were blamed on broken homes, lack of parent-child interaction, day care, sex and violence on TV, Dungeons and Dragons, spoiled children, abortion, school bullying, intolerance and marginalization of less popular students by more popular ones and, of course, gun culture.
Guess which of these theories were advanced by crazy people?
The Blacksburg massacre is no different. As you might expect, the British papers are full of stories about the aspirational U.S. culture (which allegedly punishes losers) and its trigger-happy ways. "Perhaps the pressure of being an outsider had become too much," guesses one journalist. "The son of South Korean immigrants who came to the U.S. in 1992 in search of the American dream, Cho was railing against the rich." Indeed he was. But the writer doesn't bother to explain how Cho's sister, also presumably an outsider, managed to graduate from Princeton and get a job with the State Department.
Your challenge is to name three women who've gone on shooting sprees by the time you hit the end of this article. And...go!
America's toxic culture also comes in for a licking from Bob Herbert of the New York Times, who claims the country is fundamentally misogynist and homophobic. "Violence is commonly resorted to as the antidote to the disturbing emotions raised by the widespread hostility toward women in our society and the pathological fear of so many men that they aren't quite tough enough," he opines. "The confluence of feelings of inadequacy, psychosexual turmoil and the easy availability of guns has resulted in a staggering volume of murders in this country." Actually, the murder rate has been in steep decline. But why let the facts get in the way of a good rant?
"Gosh, Margaret, I can't think of a single woman who's done that."
My own view is that America is not so bad a place to be a woman and/or immigrant and/or gay.
Hahaha hahah haha oh wait she's serious.
Mr. Cho appears to have suffered from a disorder that inclined him to act in bizarre and dysfunctional ways. The modern world offers such people a variety of ways to shape and justify their homicidal fantasies. He chose jihadism.
Um, no. He chose to shoot up a school.
Some of his video ranting even echos jihadist denunciations of the decadent West. "You've had everything you wanted," he raved. "Your Mercedes wasn't enough, you brat. Your golden necklaces weren't enough, you snobs. Your trust fund wasn't enough. Your vodka and cognac weren't enough. All your debaucheries weren't enough to fulfill your hedonistic needs."
Oh, speaking of vodka, is it TOO SOON to make Boris Yelstin jokes?
In some places, it doesn't take a madman to kill you for moral corruption. Perhaps it's sheer coincidence, but in Iran this week, the country's supreme court overturned the murder convictions of six members of an Islamic paramilitary force -- male vigilantes in their 20s -- who went around massacring people they considered immoral and debauched. (Among their victims were an unmarried couple who had been caught in public holding hands.) The killers put some of their victims in pits and stoned them to death. Some were suffocated. One man was buried alive, and the bodies of others were dumped in the desert to be eaten by wild animals. I have a feeling they're not that fond of homosexuals either.
So, are these the death squads we support, or the death squads we're against? I can never keep track.
Which is more frightening -- one insane young man with a gun, or an insane regime with an army of young men to do its bidding?
I agree, but if the Americans impeached Bush, they'd get stuck with Cheney.
Personally, I'd pick the one that wasn't on TV.
That doesn't even make sense.
mwente@globeandmail.com
So you can e-mail her to complain about her using the deaths of 32 innocent people as an excuse to bash Iran.
EDIT: It's unfortunate that I found Wente Watch only after it ended.
* Both terms ©
lopukhov
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-04-23 07:34 pm (UTC)We're not getting stoned to death, so just quite your whining!
But seriously. It's clear through the evidence presented in this article that he was acting on direct orders from Osama. That means we have to make the hard choice for the sake of national security: deport all Koreans.
And since we can't really single them out (you know they could be hiding incogneto, posing as Chinese or Thai), that means we have deport all east asians just to make sure.
Nobdy knows how many potential Korean jihadist sleeper cells are out there. Let's take the dafe route before we wake up one morning mushroom clouds over Harvard, Yale or Vassar!
no subject
Date: 2007-04-23 07:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-23 08:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-23 08:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-24 01:05 am (UTC)That these people are almost all entirely white hetero males is probably a coincidence, I'm sure.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-23 07:38 pm (UTC)And what's that chorus of insensate grunting over in that fiery corner there? Why it's Yeltsin and John Paul practicing dialectics!
no subject
Date: 2007-04-23 07:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-23 07:48 pm (UTC)Boy it's a good thing there's all this questionable external stimulus, cause how else would I get mentally ill enough all on my own to shoot other human beings? It makes me wonder how all those other mass murderers from the rest of history ever managed it. Great imaginations, I guess.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-23 07:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-23 07:56 pm (UTC)Jennifer San Marco, Sylvia Seegrist, and Laurie Dann.
Er ... perhaps I should stop spending so much time on Crime Library.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-23 08:02 pm (UTC)I'm impressed. At your knowledge, that is, not at the shooting.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-23 08:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-23 08:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-24 05:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-23 08:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-23 08:41 pm (UTC)At any rate, people keep saying that I'd like it.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-23 08:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-24 02:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-23 10:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-24 02:19 am (UTC)I don't really have any desire to see or read it. What I read sounded like your average 9th grade angsty teenager writing, and I'll get enough of that soon enough.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-24 12:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-24 02:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-24 01:03 am (UTC)We studied that song "I Don't Like Mondays" in high school, hence why I know.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-24 02:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-24 02:24 am (UTC)My English Teacher was pretty cool, as we also studied that song that goes 'At the age of 37 she knew she'd never ride / through Paris in a sports car with the warm wind in her hair'. I still randomly threaten to run naked through the empty streets screaming all the way.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-24 01:04 am (UTC)ooh ooh I know this one! Texas!
Wow man this is a great article. She was able to de-contextualize and then redefine a word that has had the same accepted meaning for the past 1,400 years into "Brandish a shot gun infront of a video before killing yourself and taking as many 'infidels' as you can down with you". She did this all in 500 words or less AND clearly futhered her own political agenda. I certainly wouldn't have been able to pull this off. Not without a consience and a self-critical viewpoint, anyway.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-24 01:32 am (UTC)I read your article, "His 15 Minutes of Fame" in the online Globe and Mail website with keen interest. I was incredibly intrigued to see you link Cho Seung-Hui to the word Jihad. Like you said, that "any random massacre is like a Rorschach test. People use it to project a political or social point of view." And so you did. I am disappointed, however, that you used the death of 32 innocent people to perpetuate Islamophobia.
Thank you for taking my feedback into consideration.
signed,
esizzle-who-had-a-really-lousy-day-and-needed-to-vent-so-thanx!
no subject
Date: 2007-04-24 02:21 am (UTC)That's a productive thing to do on a lousy day. I mostly just whine.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-24 01:25 am (UTC)Good post by the way. Bonus points for the grammar gassification of said ass and gratuitous copyright sign. Ping!
no subject
Date: 2007-04-24 02:22 am (UTC)There's always that old study where people happily gave each other fake electric shocks with little provocation, but monkeys preferred to be shocked themselves rather than hurt other monkeys.
Also, they are clearly more evolved, as we invented nuclear bombs and the stock market, and they hang out in trees and chill.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-24 05:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-24 05:37 pm (UTC)