The horror in Omaha
Wednesday December 5, 2007
Categories: Decline and fall
The Mighty Favog lives in Omaha, and has multiple wrenching blog posts up about the massacre in the shopping mall there. Read. Pray. The killer, a 19-year-old who committed suicide, said he wanted to "go out in style." Christe eleison....
Add to Del.icio.us
Add to Technorati
Add to Digg
Add to Newsvine
Add to Facebook
Add to StumbleUpon
Advertisement
Advertisement
Search This Blog
Recent Posts
About Crunchy Con
Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.
Subscribe
Archives
Blogs Worth Reading
- Front Porch Republic
- The American Conservative
- Patrick Deneen
- Conventional Folly
- The American Scene
- First Things
- Andrew Sullivan
- The Plank
- Eunomia
- Get Religion
- Postmodern Conservative
- Alex Massie
- The Corner
- Contentions
- Sharon Astyk
- Barry Ritholtz
- The Oil Drum
- Mere Comments
- First Principles (ISI)
- Brian Kaller
Sad situation when someone with nothing to live for and nothing
to lose decides to take the coward's way out and then wants to
be remembered for it !!
It occured to me as I was listening to the Today Show coverage this morning, that once we (as in the public) learn the name and background of a person who did this (our much-vaunted "right to know") we should pledge ourselves never to say his name again.
He should be forgotten. This does not preclude compassion for his suffering, but does say that we should not give people who desire fame through committing a massacre the attention they crave.
Hear hear, Alicia.
Every time some disturbed narcissist starts murdering fellow humans to "make a splash" the media attention makes a star of out him and we pick up on it. You just know that somewhere another sick soul is simmering with inspiration.
I remember reading a few years ago that Adolf Hitler's siblings took a mutual pledge never to have children, because they wanted the family line to die out after what Adolf had done.
Not to be grossly cynical, but what would the reaction be if this kid was a Muslim from Pakistan? We would be calling it a terrorist attack, and we would be attempting to do something about it. Instead, we talk about him being thrown out of his parents house and being dumped by his girlfriend.
AS a Nebraska, I have listened to our local news coverage this morning of the press conference. One thing that struck me was the ages of most of the victims. The majority were born in the 1950's, it seemed like. Please keep them and their families in your prayers. The whole state is in shock.
There were two customers murdered, along with the six employees. Please remember them and their families in your prayers.
Gary Scharf of Lincoln, NE
John McDonald of Council Bluffs, Iowa
The six employees They were all of Omaha
Angie Schuster
Maggie Webb,
Janet Jorgensen,
Diane Trent,
Gary Joy, of Omaha.
I'll pray for them, Charity. Thanks.
My prayers for the families of the 8 victims. May G-d rest their souls.
And speaking of souls ... the shooter obviously had a tormented one, and your friend Favog, in calling him a "loser" (among other things), was remarkably insensitive to this fact. (Although his 6:18 post last night seemed to endorse gun control, or at least an assault weapons ban, which I liked -- given that the conservative reaction to the Virginia Tech shootings was to have students pack heat.)
Look, as someone with depression myself, I said of Cho Seung-Hui during the Blacksburg nightmare that, even in mental illness, there is still an ultimate responsibility not to take out the anger lashing one's self and reverse it onto others instead in such a horrific and murderous way.
But we are naive if we completely ignore the role of mental illness, as well, and just say (talk about oxymorons) that the shooter was "pure evil."
"Not to be grossly cynical, but what would the reaction be if this kid was a Muslim from Pakistan? We would be calling it a terrorist attack, and we would be attempting to do something about it. Instead, we talk about him being thrown out of his parents house and being dumped by his girlfriend."
This is an interesting point. No doubt if this were a man appearing to be Arab there would be calls to round up all persons of Arab appearance in the Council Bluffs/Omaha region and take them to Gitmo. When I heard of the attack yesterday I began searching for news reports on the incident. It wasn't until late in the evening that I found one that even gave a description of the killer.
I strongly suspect that, had the killer been non-white, we would have had no problem determining the race or national origin of the killer. We would have been bombarded with headlines 'Black youth attacks shoppers" or "Muslim terrorist loose in Omaha mall."
It's interesting that when the perpetrator of an atrocity looks like us, we seem to react in a more rational/thoughtful manner than when the perpetrator looks like "them" (whoever "them" happen to be).
I'm sure the [Al]Mighty Favog was reading the kid's mind while writing his self-absorbed "eloquent" commentary. For me, he cheapened the lives the kid took, rather than inspired sympathy.
I've dealt with suicidal people, directly. If I'd known his location at the time, I'd have called the police on one of them, who thankfully did not act on his words. I do not and will never condone violence, but I will offer one observation: suicidal thoughts are directly related to a feeling of being trapped. It is not rational. It is not given to rational analysis. The best any of us can do, including myself with my limited exposure, is guess about the circumstances and, simply, try to understand.
Favog scores a zero on my understanding scale. I'd give him a negative score, but I'd need to read his mind first.
ds0490,
A few years ago a University of North Carolina student who was a Muslim ran his Jeep Cherokee into a crowd of students. I don't recall anyone calling for Muslims to be rounded up then. In fact if anything the media goes out of its way to avoid reporting on the race of the perpetraitor of crimes if they are a minority. Was any mention made of the fact the Sean Taylor's killer was black? On a less serious note, the judge who sued the Korean drycleaners for losing his pants was black, yet that was never reported in the media despite the long history of emnity between black and Koreans in urban areas.
Post a Comment
By submitting these comments, I agree to the beliefnet.com terms of service, rules of conduct and privacy policy (the "agreements"). I understand and agree that any content I post is licensed to beliefnet.com and may be used by beliefnet.com in accordance with the agreements.