Life before 2008 17 Apr 2007 01:45 pm
You know what’s bugging me about those murders yesterday?
Last night David and I were watching online coverage of the VA Tech killings and they were just starting to line up student interviews. One young man said something that has bothered me all day. His dorm was the building next to the one that had the first shooting. He’d heard about it but said, “you know..a small shooting. You don’t think anything of it and go on with your day.” And so he did. He went on to class where he witnessed the second shooting and was later on the news being grotesquely questioned by the talking head, “so did you actually see dead bodies being carried out?”
Ugh. A shooting occurrs in the building next to you, people die, and you just go on with your day like nothing happened?!‘” And while they were investigating the crime, it seems the school wanted to go on with business as usual, not shutting the day down, classes, and jobs.
I guess the disturbing answer is that yes, Virgina, we really are that desensitized to violence. Or at least this post-911/post-Columbine generation is. The first shooting, if it had even made the news, would have been a blip few would have even noticed. Maybe something would have been said about better dorm security. It took the open campus to be shot up and over 30 people to be killed before we all gasped. The speeches I heard seemed to talk about the idealistic safe place schools are supposed to be…a disillusion for another era I think. Truly one can not hide from deliberate violence like this, as the newscasters seemed to make special effort to exploit last night, letting all the would-be suicide terrorists know this was a vulnerabilty no one could protect.
But no matter how violent the world-at-large becomes, when it happens to our neighbor and we do nothing….that seems to be a tragedy that can beget nothing good.
on 17 Apr 2007 at 2:22 pm 1.Nickey said …
Ugh… that makes me sick.
on 17 Apr 2007 at 3:11 pm 2.Beth said …
You know what’s bugging me also? The fact that the news outlet (at least the one I was watching, Fox) was actually using the news event to advertise its own programming: “The Virginia Tech massacre! Tonight Fox goes in-depth with programming that explores…blah, blah, blah”. I dunno….it just seems crass to use the event to advertise to get more viewers, to increase the bottom line….
on 17 Apr 2007 at 5:00 pm 3.queenofthehill said …
Within just a couple of hours, one tv station I watch had already come up with the catchy title: “Black Monday”. Creepy how prepared the newsfolk are to make a buck off a tragedy.
on 17 Apr 2007 at 5:16 pm 4.Joel said …
A little devil’s advocacy for a moment… The most salient points on this so far have been here. Specifically
I don’t think anyone downplayed the risk. The man who was the shooter apparently killed girlfriend. He then killed the dorm’s RA who was investigating and left. Pretty much a textbook “domestic” event. Without the second shooting it would have become “Foreign student kills girlfriend, bystander”. In a community of 26,000 people it’s tragic but small. Not saying it’s appropriate but it’s a coping mechanism and a sort of callousness to the evils of this world. You keep on going if it doesn’t affect you. Sooner or later we’re all guilty of it. After all, we have numerous channels telling us about evil 24/7.
But it’s events like this that wake us up to our depravity. It wasn’t enough to murder two people. No, the world had to pay and pay it did. The tragedy is that people are going to blame this on something other than the shooter. Blame the guns, blame video games, blame his parents, blame TV, blame anything but the man who pulled that trigger over and over again.
on 17 Apr 2007 at 9:32 pm 5.gina said …
What bugs me too is that students were taping it with their cell phones! Talk about sick! I’ll tell you, if it was my kid in that University that was either killed or injured and I had to watch that or the interviews of every student’s account of the events- that my friend, would push me over the edge. The least the media could do is wait until the victims families have had the time to grieve. Seems to me that the media is just looking for something as big as 9/11 or Katrina to boost ratings like another person commented. These are the end times.
on 17 Apr 2007 at 11:11 pm 6.C&C said …
First, one should stop paying attention to the media’s coverage of this tragedy and lay aside his/her morbid curiosity to hear about and to see the grisly and ghastly details of this evil event …and yes, no matter how one wishes to dice it, slice it and explain it away, one does have a morbid curiosity if he/she doesn’t break away — turn it off — or tune it out. Besides, within a week or two, a more accurate and less grisly reporting can be heard, read, and watched. Remember, the more one watches or reads of these tragedies, the more desensitized one becomes.
Secondly, the media basically responds to the desires of the viewer/listener/reader. So a large portion of the blame for these “News Specials” and fanciful titles like “Black Monday” gets placed at the feet of the viewer/listener/reader.
Thirdly, one should have a serious brief moment of silence, prayer and reflection for those immediately affected by this tragedy. Then he/she should get away from the boob tube and other media forms and not only pray that souls will come to know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour but pray that God will use him/her to lead others to Christ as a result of this tragedy.
on 18 Apr 2007 at 9:30 am 7.Mary said …
I began to question media during 9/11– I do not want to see people jumping to their deaths. What really got me, though, was a reporter during Katrina: reporting in front of a corpse in a wheelchair. Did he pay respect to the body (of a woman in her 90s, as I recall)? No. He gloated over other people’s callousness.
I think I cursed him as I was watching. Then I turned away. I hope.
(PS: Tia, my email is ellyzahm@aol.com)
on 21 Apr 2007 at 12:23 am 8.Marcia said …
This is the first major tragedy that I did not watch obsessively on TV over and over and over. With Hurricane Katrina, 9-11, the Oklahoma bombings, Hurricane Andrew, I could not stop watching it, even as sensitive as I am to violence and grossness. I had to know if anything new was found, anything new was going to be said to make sense of it, but it never did, it only made me more frustrated. I think I finally realized that you can’t explain things like this, not really, you just have to accept that it happened and as an individual grieve in your own way and try to make yourself a little better as a person and be more aware of people around you, both those who may have a need you could help meet or those around you who may go over the edge. . .