We Now Interrupt This Regularly Scheduled, Work Induced Lull To Bring You A Rant The Size Of Stupidity
One of the groovy things about the news is that, while a lot of you might not have a clue if I were to mention an obscure congressman, I bet, in this instance, you're all going to know what I mean when I mention the guy who shot the fuck out of Virginia Tech a few days ago.
No longer an avid or active news reader, myself - because reading it makes me do things like this - I try to stick to the kinderNews, new legs for panda bears and the like but, even with an extremely adequate filtration system as I have set up, when something like this goes wrong, everybody fucking says something. I suspect that more Coallition troops and Iraqi civilians died on April 16th than were killed in that school and I will gaurentee you that more people were savagely raped and murdered in Darfur on April 16th. Naturally, that's not to say that what happened on that campus was not a tragedy and doesn't deserve the be remembered - that the survivors and their families will not need to support, but it is to say that the American Ego might do well to spend a little less time complacently waiting for another thing to distract us from the many other complex, far-reaching, international indiscretions taking place each and every single day.
I was watching Bill Maher this morning. Now, I know, he's a controversial political comedian and what I normally have to say to people on the subject of him is "People, it was called Politically Incorrect!" but, today...today Mr. Bill Maher crossed a line with me. The man is certianly not a bastion of reason or sage advice - he's amusing and he knows that's his function. On occasion, however, I'm inclined to hold political comedians responsible, at least in the small view, for reaching their audience in some way and not just taking the easy joke. It's John Stewart on Crossfire, taking the moment to make a genuine appeal to American journalists to fully understand their role, their responsibilities and their impact. Whats worse, unlike The Daily Show or The Colbert Report, Real Time, on occasion, branches into actual political discourse as was done today with one Bill Moyers. Now, it's certianly not anything like the chicken chasing antics of Tucker Carlson, but he's about as much a real journalist as you or me. Hell, I probably researched the things I'm about to say more heavily than he researched his last piece on Karl Rove.
Anyway, all of that was to get me to this point - and some of it was just some self-serving rambling but it's my blog and there's nothing more self-serving than having one so fuck it. Bill Maher dedicated the majority of his program today (or Friday/Saturday, I guess...i'm downloading and viewing at a later date, you understand) to a discussion of the insane, gun control and how self-serving and unlucky this kid was but that he really just needed to get the fuck over it.
Do not get me wrong. This kid was self-serving, egotistical, probably clinically insane and really lacked any shred of reasonable coping skills. At some point you do have to grow up and move beyond a lot of the shit that happens in middle school and highschool and realize that that chapter of your life will eventually end, or take responsiblity for the fact that, on some level, if people don't like you it's because of something you're doing or something that you are and eventually you just have to find the people that do like you because they do exist out there and you will eventually get to them. Unless, of course, there's a clinical disorder at play and, at some point, a lisenced therapist and some high quality prescription medication are in order. The fact of the matter, however, is that in addition to whatever he was doing to further complicate his situation, the kid probably did not have it easy. From a likely tie to autism or asperger's syndrome to a cultural sterotype surrounding mental illness that his family appears to have been deeply involved in and into a school environment where no one - no one - is more cruel than children....It's no wonder by the time he made it to college he was stalking women and a lot more fucked up than even that suggests.
The news is confused. Bill Maher is confused. The entire journalistic camp of our mainstream media, comedians or otherwise, looks around and wonders "why?" - Why did he shoot up a school? Why did he kill a bunch of people who were never really that mean to him?
Because, you stupid ass mother fuckers, you were that mean to him.
Children are nothing if not cruel and I suspect if the mainstream media came out and asked where his teachers were when he was a child - why his parents didn't do more to help him deal with the issues he was having at home and at school - why an administrator didn't intervene to teach these other children to be kinder to other people...Well, there would probably be a lot fewer copy cats over the coming weeks.
You don't treat other people like that. You just don't.
No longer an avid or active news reader, myself - because reading it makes me do things like this - I try to stick to the kinderNews, new legs for panda bears and the like but, even with an extremely adequate filtration system as I have set up, when something like this goes wrong, everybody fucking says something. I suspect that more Coallition troops and Iraqi civilians died on April 16th than were killed in that school and I will gaurentee you that more people were savagely raped and murdered in Darfur on April 16th. Naturally, that's not to say that what happened on that campus was not a tragedy and doesn't deserve the be remembered - that the survivors and their families will not need to support, but it is to say that the American Ego might do well to spend a little less time complacently waiting for another thing to distract us from the many other complex, far-reaching, international indiscretions taking place each and every single day.
I was watching Bill Maher this morning. Now, I know, he's a controversial political comedian and what I normally have to say to people on the subject of him is "People, it was called Politically Incorrect!" but, today...today Mr. Bill Maher crossed a line with me. The man is certianly not a bastion of reason or sage advice - he's amusing and he knows that's his function. On occasion, however, I'm inclined to hold political comedians responsible, at least in the small view, for reaching their audience in some way and not just taking the easy joke. It's John Stewart on Crossfire, taking the moment to make a genuine appeal to American journalists to fully understand their role, their responsibilities and their impact. Whats worse, unlike The Daily Show or The Colbert Report, Real Time, on occasion, branches into actual political discourse as was done today with one Bill Moyers. Now, it's certianly not anything like the chicken chasing antics of Tucker Carlson, but he's about as much a real journalist as you or me. Hell, I probably researched the things I'm about to say more heavily than he researched his last piece on Karl Rove.
Anyway, all of that was to get me to this point - and some of it was just some self-serving rambling but it's my blog and there's nothing more self-serving than having one so fuck it. Bill Maher dedicated the majority of his program today (or Friday/Saturday, I guess...i'm downloading and viewing at a later date, you understand) to a discussion of the insane, gun control and how self-serving and unlucky this kid was but that he really just needed to get the fuck over it.
Do not get me wrong. This kid was self-serving, egotistical, probably clinically insane and really lacked any shred of reasonable coping skills. At some point you do have to grow up and move beyond a lot of the shit that happens in middle school and highschool and realize that that chapter of your life will eventually end, or take responsiblity for the fact that, on some level, if people don't like you it's because of something you're doing or something that you are and eventually you just have to find the people that do like you because they do exist out there and you will eventually get to them. Unless, of course, there's a clinical disorder at play and, at some point, a lisenced therapist and some high quality prescription medication are in order. The fact of the matter, however, is that in addition to whatever he was doing to further complicate his situation, the kid probably did not have it easy. From a likely tie to autism or asperger's syndrome to a cultural sterotype surrounding mental illness that his family appears to have been deeply involved in and into a school environment where no one - no one - is more cruel than children....It's no wonder by the time he made it to college he was stalking women and a lot more fucked up than even that suggests.
The news is confused. Bill Maher is confused. The entire journalistic camp of our mainstream media, comedians or otherwise, looks around and wonders "why?" - Why did he shoot up a school? Why did he kill a bunch of people who were never really that mean to him?
Because, you stupid ass mother fuckers, you were that mean to him.
Children are nothing if not cruel and I suspect if the mainstream media came out and asked where his teachers were when he was a child - why his parents didn't do more to help him deal with the issues he was having at home and at school - why an administrator didn't intervene to teach these other children to be kinder to other people...Well, there would probably be a lot fewer copy cats over the coming weeks.
You don't treat other people like that. You just don't.
Labels: news, politics, rants, television
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