Baby, Don’t You Ever Wonder?
Michelle Malkin’s really grasping for straws here:
The Associated Press has decided to hound the VTech maniac’s sister. Why? Is there evidence that she knew of his plans or was aware of his murderous tendencies? No. The AP doesn’t report that. Instead, the entire article focuses on her employment in the Bush State Department. And this is relevant how?
Relevant how? Because it’s interesting.
In our effort to wrap our minds around this unthinkable tragedy, people are trying to gather as much information about this guy as we can. Who was he? What was he thinking? When did he veer so far from the path? Where did he come from? Why couldn’t anyone prevent this from happening? How could he do this?
There’s nothing in that AP report Malkin cites that suggests anything more than this: A child of struggling immigrants who’d sacrificed their own happiness for his was an English major at a state school whose passionate writings were poorly received and who had a sister just a bit older who’d graduated from a top school and got an apparently deeply satisfying job with the State Department helping poor people. That information falls well short of wrapping up my own personal investigation, but it certainly helps me to flesh out the character who inhabits my imagination. His sister’s employer bears even less responsibility for her brother’s actions than she does.
Somehow, I suspect Malkin will clear her throat and start singing a different tune if the media reveal that Cho’s letter contains disparaging sentences about the president.
Gavin adds: This is a wondrous example of Malkin’s suzerainty over language. ‘To hound’ and ‘to target’ shall today mean, ‘to write a story about someone using publicly-available information.’ These are now the official definitions according to the dictionary. Please update your files, and be aware that these and all other word-definitions are subject to change on a rolling basis.
Somehow, I suspect Malkin will clear her throat and start singing a different tune if the media reveal that Cho’s letter contains disparaging sentences about the president.
oh, but it did.
here.
Sorry I left the link out.
Don’t worry, events in Turkey will fill up the Rightwing blogosphere with several weeks of hate.
Malkin’s a moron.
However, it is kinda offensive that, precisely because the kid killed so many people, his writings are now being widely disseminated and read.
Ya know, if the guy’s sister had worked for a Dem, she’s be all over it. Post after post after post. She’s pathetic.
“However, it is kinda offensive that, precisely because the kid killed so many people, his writings are now being widely disseminated and read.”
Offensive – perhaps. But hardly unprecedented. The writings of individulas who commit unspeakable acts tend to get analyzed.
Re:DJShay
If the guy’s sister had once worked for anybody who remotely could be considered Moooooslim or Ay-rabbb, Malkin and the Savage Wiener would have been simply screaming, no words, just an hour of “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA” every day, over and over.
I know it sounds like it would just be another day for Malkin & Savage Wiener, but it would be just that much worse.
Imagine if his sister had worked for Hillary.
Exactly. According to the Wingnut Standard of Muslim Guilt, Cho’s sister’s employer Proves Bush Did It.
What a whiny, whining whiner she is.
“Thanks to you, I die like Jesus Christ, to inspire generations of the weak and the defenseless people.”
I can’t wait for Michelle to write about how his Christian religion played a part in this tragedy…
No, the most important part of his biography was the fact that he was an English major. I think we should post federal marshals in each poetry class to deter future acts of violence from unhinged English major radicals. Perhaps, we should ban the English major outright. It serves no overt economic purpose, after all.
Keep an eye on the English majors amongst you!
The guy was deranged and sadistic, and his biography should not be used to justify your personal racist, ideological or partisan agenda. Rather, it can only help law enforcement officials, campus administrators and other first providers prevent another such tragedy. My thoughts go out to the families of the victims as well as the family of the perpetrator.
Listening to some of the people at VT talking about Cho’s history is infuriating. They are saying that because he was once put on involuntary hold, along with the so-called stalking incidents, something should have been done. Which is ridiculous. And of course, nobody will come out and say just exactly WHAT should have been done.
What the fuck are we now advocating? Everybody who was ever involuntarily detained as “a danger to themselves or others” should be, what, put in a camp? They say he “shouldn’t have been allowed on campus”. Hokay. All campuses everywhere? What about a job? Should he be allowed to have a job? And goodness, you can’t just let him live out there among all us regular people.
There’s no answer, but that doesn’t seem to prevent people from saying “with what we knew, this could have been prevented!!”. Until somebody comes out and says what they’re only hinting at, that people with psychatric issues should be locked up forever in the interest of protecting society from the tiny minority of them that will ever do anything to anybody, this is cheap sensationalism, and grasping at a fix to an unfixable problem.
Kinda like Iraq…
mikey
Classic projection. She’s bracing for the attack she couldn’t conceive of not launching if the shoe were on the other foot. e.i. his sister happened to be in Gore’s S.D.
i was an english and french major. they need to jail me for being a traitor.
“with what we knew, this could have been prevented!!�.
Like mikey, this sentiment irritates the shit out of me. Face it folks, the violent, fear mongering culture, the easy access to guns and the deplorable attitudes of americans toward mental health means this stuff is going to keep on happening. It’s tragic, but until there are major shifts in US culture,policies and attitudes, we’ll see this again. And, once again, the finger pointing will start. And just like this incident, even the victims will be blamed for “not packing”.
jenni!
And what mikey said. He was put into a facility where he was psychologically evaluated and released to outpatient care. Even trained professionals can’t always tell if and how badly someone will snap.
And the fact that he was held & released quite some time ago…
Hey, if all these Va Tech kids wuz real men like Republicans, wouldn’t the bullets just have bounced off of ’em, or maybe been so afeared of the kids’ conservative values that them there bullets woulda just plum give up?
Now the Daily Princetonian is hounding and targeting Sun-Kyung Cho.
wouldn’t the bullets just have bounced off of ‘em,
People seem to have a lot of wishful beliefs about ways to survive against a gunman.
targeting Sun-Kyung Cho.
I don’t know if that constitutes targeting, but they really should let his family alone.
Oh. Stupid. I get it.
“with what we knew, this could have been prevented!!�.
So, lock up every college student who, at some time or another, acts disturbed/sad/angry/says something stupid?
That’s a lot of empty classrooms.
Maybe we lock up every adolescent, just to be safe, and let ’em out when adolescence is over.
Or not.
Wow, I just can’t wait til it comes down to right wing bloggers & pundits to decide which kids are “weird” and which ones aren’t!!!
the mosque was only partially hounded.
Again, a big thumbs up for Mikey.
Just to clarify though, there are plenty of people who are mentally ill who AREN’T in danger of snapping suddenly and carrying out tremendous crimes.
But, if someone does “snap” if you will (I don’t know what exactly to call it) and they don’t care whether they live or die, there’s not much you can do to defend against that threat. If you wish to live (which I would hope is all of us) and there’s a guy who doesn’t care if he dies and he also wants to take as many people out with him as possible, he’s got a hell of an edge on you. Which is why the Mark Steyns and John Derbyshires are wrong about the whole spirit of flight 93 chickenhawkery they’ve been squawking.
“with what we knew, this could have been prevented!!�.
Seems to me this would be better said about Dubya getting into the White House: not once, but twice!
Gavin,
I suspect the term ‘hound’ was in reference to this passage in the article:
“Messages left on her office voicemail, in which she identifies herself as “Sun Cho,” were not immediately returned on Wednesday.”
Not sure i would say thats hounding but the reporter did call repeatedly to speak with her.
Wow, I just can’t wait til it comes down to right wing bloggers & pundits to decide which kids are “weird� and which ones aren’t!!!
They’ll probably advocate using voter registration databases to make the determination. As long as you register republican you’ll be considered normal. Any other choice is clear evidence of BDS. And I’m surprised the reference to Bush in Cho’s rantings hasn’t caused a frenzy in the blogosphere around the BDS theme yet. I guess they’re still picking at the meager carcass of the jihadi angle.
Sorry to go OT but speaking of mangy carcasses which one is Schlussel and which one is Coulter?
If only someone had handed Bush Jr. a memo to the effect of “Cho Seung-Hui Determined To Strike In United States.”
So the AP posted Cho’s sister’s personal contact info on their blog and told their readers to harass her?
Hey, it was publicly available, it’s her fault.
What reminded me of the wingnut mindset on this was the State Dept. spokesman saying something like “she is not a direct employee of the State Department” — as though it would be a problem if she was. Um, no.
Again, if she worked for Hillary it would be evidence of some kind of librul conspiracy……….
Why oh why do you keep concentrating on the bad news from Virgina Tech, no mention here of the thousands of students who were not shot in the head this week, try and get some perspective here.
After all the violence there is limited to a few isolated locations, most of the campus is as safe as New York!
RubDMC: Maybe we lock up every adolescent, just to be safe, and let ‘em out when adolescence is over.
That was the idea behind establishing junior high schools, but it doesn’t seem to have worked.
Even trained professionals can’t always tell if and how badly someone will snap.
Come on, Tigrismus, you’re creating the impression that trained professionals do have some ability to make accurate predictions. You give the psychological profession too much credit.
Well, how about if I say that some folks are so obviously as nutty as a Snickers bar that all the training in the world couldn’t hinder someone from noticing? Stimmt’s? 😉
I am waiting for Michelle and friends to note that among the victims were an Egyptian man, a Lebanese-American woman, 3 Indian legal immigrants, and a Vietnamese-Chinese legal immigrant. And a kid from Boston whose name sounds like 3rd or 4th generation Lebanese-American.
Crickets.
Well, how about if I say that some folks are so obviously as nutty as a Snickers bar that all the training in the world couldn’t hinder someone from noticing? Stimmt’s? 😉
I can’t argue with that…
Sometimes I want to launch into long Szasz-style rants about the undue respect given to trained psychologists and to their over-blown claims to be better than lay-people at predicting or modifying human behaviour. Then I look at Krauthammer and Dr Mrs Instapundit and of course the thought comes to mind… what could I possibly say that would discredit the profession better than them?
Anyone else sense the palable disappointment in Malkin and others when they found out Cho wasn’t a Muslim? They so wanted it to be someone from Pakistan they were nearly creaming their jeans when that early report said “Asian”.
me too, aka dad. when she thought he was an islamofascist, she was all over it. turns out he was a good christian, she shuts the fuck up about religion. i wish the guy had also been a philipino anchor baby. that would make her head explode.