JOHN: I hate him. Must kill Dick. Dick must die. Kill Dick ... Richard McBeef. What kind of name is that? What an asshole name. I don't like it. And look at his face. What an asshole face. I don't like his face at all. You don't think I can kill you, Dick? You don't think I can kill you? Gotcha...got one eye. Got the other eye.
Then again, if he'd only gone to Bennington instead of Virginia Tech, Cho might have ended up a literary star.
UPDATE: How long do you think it's going to take before some sickos stage "Richard McBeef," film it and post it to YouTube? I say by sundown tomorrow.
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When we look at what he did, calmly and methodically assassinate fellow human beings, we have a daily occurance in other parts of the world. The same mental process that armed him for such brutal behavior is exactly the same process that prepares those kinds of killers in places like Iraq or Palestine. I believe understanding the process of how a person becomes an assassin should be our goal. Writing, heck if bad writing was a reason to suspect psychosis, we'd all be crazy.
One thing abou the teacher who "turned him in"-we all go through tough times.I'm sure she meant well. But if every time an adolescent or teen boy acted out we put him in "therapy" or some such nonsense, we'd have to lock up half the males from high school through college.
Some people here are trying to extrapoliate a broad overarching lesson from this. But it might just boil down to one nutball and some guns. What we absolutely have to do is get away from self-esteem and instead give teens a better way for dealing with the dissappointments and cruelties in their everyday lives. Yes, you are special-but not everyone will love you. Deal with it.
I really fear the backlash from this event. Every student writer who turns in something "dark" is now going to be under scrutiny, considered a possible future psycho killer. I think that Victor's observations are right on target.
On a different note, on an Asian tangent, this play and the crimes committed by the playwright actually make me think of the Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima, and the weird way his life came to an end at the end of a highly successful writing career.
Victor Morton, thank you for your spot-on comments about the absurdity of trying to create a "Bureau of Pre-Crime Detection."
It's hard enough to write, without having to sit there and self-censor because "someone might think I'm crazy."
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