Soapbox

The Language of Violence

As a parent, I hereby announce that I plan to end every day from now on being grateful that no one burst into my child’s calculus class on that particular day with a gun. I have certainly not been untouched by Monday’s horrible events on the campus of Virginia Tech. But I was taken by surprise by my reaction this morning when I read a small side story about one of the victims.

According to e-mails sent to his wife from Virginia Tech students who were in his class that day, Liviu Librescu, a 76 year old engineering professor and holocaust survivor, died Monday morning when he blocked the doorway to his classroom with his body to allow students time to climb out the windows. Part of my sadness stemmed from the fact that I know my step-dad Larry would have done the exact same thing, but my eyes filled with tears when I read that Monday, April 16th was also Holocaust Remembrance day. Talk about life being a circle.

Anyone who tries to say that the events at V.T. were "caused by" any particular thing is an idiot. No, it was not the fault of Sara Brady and the gun control lobby, nor was it caused by gun ownership. It was not caused by taking the Bible out of classrooms, or by immigration, or violent video games, teachers not being allowed to spank their pupils, our liberal, criminal-protecting society, or by the ACLU, all of which theories I have heard proffered in the last day and a half.

Evidence shows that this young man had been deeply, deeply disturbed for years and that a number of red flags had been raised about him. Students complained and teachers tried to intervene and get him into counseling without success. Hindsight leads one to wonder why Virginia Tech could not simply expel the troubled young man, but even hindsight is imperfect. Had he been expelled, perhaps he would have taken out his despair and rage on a crowded shopping mall, or a lunchtime restaurant, or a subway train. We simply don’t know, and when blow-hard pundits pretend that they do, we should turn them off. That attitude is pompous and dangerous.

This sad event was also NOT caused by the Bush administration, even by the wildest stretch of any 9/11 conspiracy buff’s imagination. But I was bewildered when the President, in his speech at the memorial service yesterday, decided it was appropriate to describe, for the people who had just lived through it, the terror of huddling behind locked doors and enduring "the worst mass shooting in American history." Can you imagine if you went to a funeral and the speaker took time to describe the painful death your loved one had just suffered? It was an unfortunate but I guess not surprising choice by a man who’s very job seems to depend on American being in a constant state of fear.

"Bad people want – to – kill – us !" he once proclaimed slowly and emphatically, as if he was speaking to a room full of retarded 3rd graders.

Remember when we had nothing to fear but fear itself? Not any more. Americans seem to like being afraid, and you can’t blame that on George Bush either, though he certainly takes frequent advantage of it. Has anyone seen Quentin Tarentino’s latest flick, "Grindhouse"? I certainly hope not. Just the TV trailers for that movie should be rated X and confined to adult only channels. When did murder, torture and dismemberment become "hip" and entertaining? Add some really lurid sexual sadism and you have a sure recipe for a teenage blockbuster: bonus points if you can work in cannibalism or necrophilia.

I am not claiming to see any direct relationship between this trend and the murder rate in America, but I do wonder if it is coincidence that so many of our most popular television shows today involve grisly yet clinically detached examinations of multiple killings. It appears death is the only thing America finds interesting any more, and the more sexually-deviant the killing, the better. I refuse to watch the show "Criminal Minds", not only because I find Mandy Patinkin tedious, but because I am tired of serial killers being portrayed as brilliant, calculating and interesting people! They are always criminal masterminds who spend years developing huge, complicated criminal plans with symbolism that rivals the DaVinci code.

Pffftt! I suspect that in reality they are usually sordid, angry, nasty and occasionally quite STUPID people- but on TV they are fascinating and almost cool.

I was also troubled by news coverage of the events (though I admit that I spent my share of time in front of the TV Monday). As always, a title for the event was immediately created, complete with dramatic music and graphics, because in America we must package our important news as if it were a lurid new television series. And why not? In this country, we consume mass murder and rape as our favorite form of entertainment, and if the real murder isn’t presented as slickly as the fake stuff, we might just turn the channel.

We were told over and over and over that this was a record: the "worst mass killing in American history". If I heard that phrase once, I heard it a hundred times. In print and on television we were treated to lists, actually ranking past mass murders like a sick verion of David Letterman’s Top 10. Columbine? Sorry, but you just don’t rank up there any more, fellas. I hope that, with our obsessive, record-setting society, some other disturbed individual doesn’t consider that a challenge.

Speaking of setting records and just to keep all this in perspective: today in Iraq 137 people have been murdered. Will NBC report on this tonight with somber tones and a snazzy graphic: "Massacre in Iraq" ? Ummm…probably not.

And finally-

Katie has an internship once a week at a small, private pre-K -8 school in Clintonville. This afternoon there was a sudden flurry of activity and she was taken aside by the pre-K teacher and informed that the school was on lockdown because they had just received a threatening phone call from a parent.

"Oh God- I’m a grown-up today, aren’t I?" she described her thoughts as the teacher asked her to help secure the classroom. As she sat guarding the door and trying to act as if nothing were going on, she realized that Sara, the smallest and sweetest child in the class was the only one visible from the door. "I found myself wondering if I could drag her away fast enough if someone came in the door." she said, shaking her head. "I wasn’t going to let anyone get to one of my kids!" She confessed being happy to return to high school tomorrow where, as a student, it is permissable to run away from rather than towards someone brandishing a gun.

There are a lot of rotten things about human beings. Despite our intellect, we seem hell-bent on destruction and unwilling or unable to learn from our most basic mistakes. Too often we react with fear and hatred to anything different than us. Yet the instinct to protect the powerless, already fully formed in my 16 year-old daughter, is one of the amazing things that gives me hope for us as a species.

Peace.