Comments on Morning News

170 killed in Iraq yesterday?

More than 300 deaths were reported by http://antiwar.com/updates/

Is that 5 times or 10 times the number of people killed at VT?

Is there any reliable information?

I think that NBC is glorifying the violence by showing Cho's videos, pictures. It is showing the is ill/dissaffected people of the world that mass violence can make you famous and a martyr. The story should be focused on his mental illness.

Have we as a society slept while our rights to abortion are being chipped away. It will be extremely difficult to get an abortion after 12 weeks. Many people don't know that they are pregnant until that time. If the conservatives want to stop abortion, why not promote birth control, sex ed and SUPPORT--housing, food, free child care---for pregnant moms.

wow. if you look at just the top of the post, it looks like brittney spears has shaved her head and taken to carrying a hammer around.

I'm sorry, I don't buy analogies between Iraq and the Revolution. I didn't when the Bushies made them, and I don't now. It is nice to be reminded of American history, though.

Patriot "Buttrick"?

That picture of Cho with the hammer and the NBC logo looks like a future NBC promo shot. Yuck.

For fuck's sake, please remove that photo off your website. It's too disturbing and between this and hearing that guy's diatribe on NPR, it's pretty much ruined my day.

This guy is truly, truly scary; he's not a character in a fictional horror movie!!!! This was a real person who murdered real people. You may not think so, but this killing has scared me big time. Can you hold off publicizing the killer's twisted propaganda?

Yeah, really. Do we have to look at this piece of shit's face every time we turn around? I'm sure that's exactly what he wanted.

The guy was horribly mentally ill. They had what, a dozen chances to do something with him, to get him some help, and every single one of them fell through? The guy was deemed to be so ill that he couldn't care for himself. It's certainly not like people can say they didn't see this coming. At what point is someone going to step up and say "I could have made a difference, and I didn't." It'd be nice to not have this crap every couple of years, because this kind of thing IS PREVENTABLE.

For cripes sake, why must you validating this kid's delusional thinking? This is not some knockoff of Natural Born Killers. Real people lost their lives. If NBC had any ethics, they'd have turned the video over to the FBI instead of broadcasting it all over the planet. But they don't. And apparently, neither do you.

I agree...you should take that picture off. It's disturbing.

I agree...you should take that picture off. It's disturbing.

What #10 just said.

Seriously, this guy obviously wanted a twisted, posthumous fame, and now that's exactly what we're giving him. When you kill 30 people, you shouldn't get to have your dying wish.

I agree too.

The guy was horribly mentally ill. They had what, a dozen chances to do something with him, to get him some help, and every single one of them fell through?

What are they supposed to do, lock him up in a padded room for life? Are we going to make depression or writing plays about murder a crime? There's no really effective treatment for antisocial personality (sociopathy) and many cases of depression and excessive aggression cannot be effectively treated.

It would be AWESOME if we could reduce the taboo and increase public funding for psychological and psychiatric treatment, but who knows if that could have prevented this. Even if they could have forced people to be his friends, other people will inevitably slip through the cracks.

The only definite way this could have been prevented would have been not letting this guy go to the corner store and buy one gun a month.

@10:

Actually, the FBI has stated they did in fact review the video clips, and there wasn't anything new in them they hadn't already discovered from searching his dorm & from subsequent interviews.

From the AP News Wire:

"NBC News President Steve Capus said the package arrived in Tuesday afternoon's mail, but was not opened until Wednesday morning. It was sent by overnight delivery and apparently had the wrong ZIP code, NBC said.

An alert postal employee brought the package to NBC's attention after noticing the Blacksburg return address and a name similar to the words reportedly found scrawled in red ink on Cho's arm after the bloodbath, "Ismail Ax," NBC said.

Capus said that the network notified the FBI around noon, but held off reporting on it at the FBI's request, so that the bureau could look at it first. NBC finally broke the story just before police announced the development at 4:30 p.m."

http://www.spokesmanreview.com/ap/story.asp?AP_ID=D8OJGREG0

And although I quite understand the emotional shock some of you may be feeling at the sight of this deranged individual, the fact is he's dead, he's not coming back, and so he's not really in a position to enjoy his "fame" or "martyr" status.

Seriously, why are you-all suddenly so concerned about NBC "glorifying violence"? Do you guys not watch much network televsion?

Showing pictures of the corpses - now THAT would truly be disturbing. Be thankful the networks have shown at least that modicum of decorum and sensitivity.

I was about to come on here and plead for Josh to take the photo of that fucking sicko off the Slog, but many of you beat me to it.

But let me reiterate: I don't need to see pictures of this fucker, especially in an aggressive pose. He deserves no posthumous glory. We need to report the facts and the fallout but we don't need to fetishize the droppings left by this murderous psychopath.

At sunrise on April 19, 1775, after a late night slog from Boston, an estimated 800 British troops, under the command of Colonel Francis Smith and Major John Pitcairn, arrived in Lexington on their way to Concord to seize weapons.

I knew Slog was to blame...

What Schmader said.

Oh--and post #10 should read "validate." (No "edit" function for Slog posts. Damn.)

Removing his photo and doing the typical American thing of "If we don't see it, we can pretend it didn't really happen" doesn't change the fact that he did it and it happened. Sheltering ourselves away all the time is why we're such a nation of pussies who can't even stand up to our own dictator-president. Removing the pictures and such allows our minds to create a barrier that prevents us from coming to grips with the realities in this world - I'm not advocating violence by any stretch of the imagination; hell, I'm a buddhist. However, I question the desire to desperately shelter ourselves from all things unpleasant, in the same way that we've become disassociated with where meat comes from and the like. Look at his picture, learn from it. Start thinking about how or why he was the way he was, and if something like this can be prevented in the future. Sheltering yourself away prevents us from dealing with, and, making changes to address the problems in the world. His victims alone deserve to have us learn from this.

So is it o.k. to wear school sucks T-shirts anymore. Not to make light of the subject, but all the pshycho analizing of this guy is starting to make everybody who delves in writing , art, illustration for comic books and movies look like a bunch of basket cases. Oh yeah and did you know alot of Cops and police officers posed like this also. Your dad probably posed like this while in the Military. So what.
I heard on the news the question "the killers watched Natural Born Killers' over and over and Quentin Tarantinos name mentioned a few times on the news.
As far as I see it the kid shouldn't have been at an Engineering school, he should of been at an art school or actors studio. And he is not scary or other worldy. He's a flesh and blood kid who freaked out on own sense of self worth. If I could turn back time
I bet I could have adopted him and turned him around and gave him better insight about life, girls, and how to take the hard times with the good times. Someone poisoned his mind with anger and he got lost in the poison.
The way these arm chair doctors see it it is like everyone should steer clear of the arts and self expression industry. Half the Stranger editors would be held to the fire if these qucks had everybody believe its our society and glorification of violence and the arts. Yes art can be violent.
It is not always of pretty flowers and naked people.
'That guy at open mike night might be disturbed' oh no. oh my. what do we do? Oh yeah make society turn on its own artists with paranoia.
That kid may be effed up but that doesn't mean all the other angry young youth are and this call to arms we gotta do something sounds llike a witch hunt. Some would say Hunter S Thompson was disturbed and nuts, and some would say even that guy who wrote Slaughter house five as being a litle out there. So you see we 'kooks' and 'crazys' already are your heros in the art and entertainment world.
You want a rocket scientist then go play in your own corners, and leave the mind of the artist alone.
I rather see a violent movie made with actors, than the reality of some nut like this going out and actually doing it. And that goes for war to.
And I'm a vet.
I rather hear of some guy masterbating to porn, than having to get his rocks off by raping women.
And another thing on Iraq. If you want to protest U.S occupation over there why don't you go hop on a plane and join in some Kumbaya protest and death vigil in the streets over there. I'm sure that'll make a differance. In the mean time we got a vigil here in america going on about our own. Besides I mourn and rage about the millions that die in Africa. The Millions that die in India, and the Millions that die even in our Oceans.
I'm sick of mourning. Pouring one for the homies and honyies all over the world and VT.

Ann: My urge to remove the photo isn't about shielding myself from the "unpleasantness" of the massacre. That's impossible. But screw the media-whore perpetrator--if you want drive home what this tragedy really means, show pictures of the bloodsoaked classroom, and non-crime-scene photos of the victims.

#22 true very true.

Hey COMTE, I watch plenty of extremely fake violence on network TV (I'm a Law and Order fan after all), but I am well aware that it is fake, that it's a story with actors playing real people.

This is different, this is a real person who killed real people.

Thank you #22

Please take down the picture of the Virginia Tech killer.

This is exactly what he wanted, and the press bought it hook, line, and sinker.

Good article here: http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/VATech/story?id=3056168&page=1

why not, in its place, profile the prof who was one of the top five in the nation in biomedical research relating to cerebral palsy, or the prof who was the Holocaust survivor, or any of the brilliant young students who lost their lives?

What are they supposed to do, lock him up in a padded room for life? Are we going to make depression or writing plays about murder a crime? There's no really effective treatment for antisocial personality (sociopathy) and many cases of depression and excessive aggression cannot be effectively treated.

I agree with you that they can't be effectively treated. But there is a threshold past which you can be institutionalized against your will, and from everything that's being said, this guy was way over it. He was not simply antisocial. If treatment doesn't work and accommodation isn't possible, there is another option. It's not pleasant, and people would like to think that everyone can be fixed, but that's not always true. It's simply a last resort.

I deal with mental illness myself, as do many of the people I know. There's no question of criminalizing depression, that's on a completely different level. We're talking here not about someone who wrote bad plays, we're talking about someone who was so mentally ill that he was deemed unable to care for himself. And yet, they let him out.

There were a lot of abuses in the old mental "health" field. I think to some extent, those abuses have meant that extreme cases don't get the care that they need because we're afraid of that happening again. As a society, we really do need to get to the point where we recognize that some people need counseling, some people need medication, some people need to be supported in group homes, and some people need to be removed from society altogether. They cannot cope, they will not ever be able to cope. Leaving them on their own is just as cruel to them as it is to the people around them.

To me, that photo drives home just how much of a loser Cho was. He's pretending to be tough, pretending to be powerful. He was a fucking whiner who blamed other people for his problems.

As far as his supposed mental illness goes, he wasn't schizophrenic. He wasn't hearing voices. His dog didn't tell him to kill dozens of people. Our government, correctly, only commits people who have proven themselves to be threats to themselves or others. Cho didn't exhibit enough warning signs for anyone to justify forcing him into psychiatric treatment. He probably could have gotten help if he wanted it. He didn't. He wanted to punish others for his own problems, the main one being that he was a pathetic failure. Fuck him.

#26 he probably will, but it is hard to get those storys out because the family and friends are still grieving and its it takes awhile to get out except for witness reports and hearsay.

As for the perp, they instantly closed in on his life( and he as well closed in on ours with his mailing those videos and all) and ramshackeld everything in his inventory and anything that was his is no longer private after a killing. Just like a Law and Order or CsI episode where we have to suffer through an hour of murder and investigation and trivial pursuit just to see the victim vindicated at the last damned minute
and even then the perp fades away into obscurity after being caught with a big flippin smile on his face.

I miss Bank Robberies like the news got in the 20s and 30s. At least people just lost money , not their lives. why can't we have more of those kind of perps and less of these self centered my feelings been hurt murdering jackasses on the news these days. Thats an oxymoron I think.oh well. and I'm probably going to be told I'm a jackass for saying Bank robberies are somehow a more respectable crime.

I know I know people did lose their lives in bank robberies, but that usually was not the robbers intentions unless he is a nut.hence self centered as I said.

The argument against putting up his pic because "It's what he wanted" has no traction for me. I don't care what he did or didn't want. Do we not report on terrorist bombings because it's what the terrorists want?

What this guy did is huge news. A wild part of the story is that he sent this package to NBC. I'm certainly going to flag that in morning news. And since his imagery was the story, it made sense to run some of that imagery in the morning news wrap up.

Also:

Schmader makes a good point that the pics of the blood soaked classroom would be a better way to confront the reality of the crimes, rather than the guy's pre-fab Bonnie & Clyde/Patty Hearst self-styled posing pictures. (Sidenote: Indeed, criminals have been pulling publicity stunts like this forever. B&C did it and those pics ran everywhere.)

However, I don't have those murder pics. If I did, I'd run them (alongside the ABC pics) And, of course, I'd be criticized for being insensitive to the victims' families.

you cannot always see this coming. it freaks me out to think that people here would actually institutionalize someone because of anti-social behavior. what?!?!? i was anti-social in jr high. i liked violent movies. i became an artist. i would never hurt anyone. i can't imagine being that same kid but having to be worried that i shouldn't express myself for fear of being locked up.

@24:

So violence is acceptable, so long as it's "fake"? Watching images of people being shot, stabbed, skulls cut open, eviscerations, severed limbs, etc., etc., ad nauseum, is perfectly fine because nobody REALLY gets hurt?

And that's just a typical episode of "Heroes".

Well, I suppose there's some comfort in that at least one person out there hasn't become so desensitized from a steady stream of "fake" blood, gore and mayhem that they at least recognize REAL horror when they're confronted by it.

But, there are far, far too many people at VT today, who frankly don't have the easy, convenient option of turning their heads away. They're going to have the image of this maniac burned into their memories for the rest of their lives, and they're the lucky ones, because at least they still have lives.

The least the rest of us can do is to confront it ourselves, if even from the safety of both our physical and psychological distance. I for one would rather deal with the resulting discomfort, than allow the image of a dead mass-murderer to have that much power over me that I can't bear to look at it.

Wench, if you think think "there's a threshold past which you can be institutionalized against your will, and from everything that's being said, this guy was way over it", you're talking about forcibly locking up a million people in this country. There are a LOT of angry, twisted up shitheads in this country.

It's hindsight bias to say you can see this coming.

I disagree about seeing the pictures. I want to see the pictures. This guy is part of us, both as a type and, after Monday, a real person. The fact that he is hideous and frightening and stupid and pathetic and contemptible doesn't change that.

What is the place in our world for people like that? The problem with him is that he's not integrated into the world; he's shut out. He blames us, but no one else would; he shut himself out. Look at him: would you want him for a friend? Would you reach out to that? I wouldn't. If I knew that a bunch of people wouldn't get killed, I still wouldn't, because really, what can you do with him? There's no personality hooks there you can hold onto.

There's a lot of people like that. Our society is full of garbage individuals. They are all around us. You don't see them, but that's because you don't want to. Cho didn't become garbage because he killed; he was already garbage. Maybe he knew it; I don't know. It's impossible to see past all that childish rage. But look at him: he's an idiot. He was 23 -- quite old for an undergraduate. He was an English major, but his writing was immature, illiterate, retarded-sounding. Supposedly he was good at math, in high school, but being good at math in high school isn't very impressive, especially not five or six years later. The guy was a boob. A boob with a bag full of guns and ammo.

How do we keep people from turning into garbage? Nobody knows. The mental health profession has some extremely limited, extremely painstaking answers, mostly pharmaceutical ones that work on a fraction of all patients, but we are nowhere near being able to adequately treat everyone who is at risk. Some can't be treated at all; our society is increasingly hostile to shitheads who lack the capacity to be nice, well-adjusted folks. Stupid people are being left behind.

I'm curious about some of the things he said. He appears to have been obsessed with sexual abuse of children: he wrote a play about it, and in his mail packet he says at one point "You wanna rape us John Mark Karrs? You wanna rape us Debra LaFaves? [blank] you." I think he's probably trying in his tiny little mind to grasp for a justification, even if it doesn't apply to him or "us" at all, but it's interesting. Was he abused?

He's just like our local shithead, Kyle Huff. What do you do with people like that? If you lock up a million threatening people, you might be marginally safer, but you'll also commit a lot of injustice. And you'll end up locking up all kinds of ordinary people on trumped up B.S. just because someone has a dispute with them. Look how long it took for the Patriot Act to use the "terrorist" tag against people guilty of being mere Democrats -- almost immediately. That's what happens with unchecked powers like that, every time.

So no, no answers. No idea. Just more horror. And somewhere out there the next guy is buying his guns in a gun shop.

Well, Josh, #31, if the argument holds "no traction" for you, and that's the way you want to rationalize it, so be it. You have a lot of company in the MSM. I happen to think you are dead wrong, but I don't have the power you do, so I will do what I have to do, and take a break from the media for a while. You folks with the power of the media will no doubt just keep flashing the "multimedia manifesto". The rest of us will just have to tune out, and that is fine. No problem.

I graduated from Virginia Tech with a degree in civil engineering, and I sat in the very classrooms where that whack job took the lives of 30 innocent people.

Enough, already.

@10, @13 - yeah, remove the pic. You just reward freaks like that by letting them push their carp. Seriously.

That said, it is over 200 dead yesterday. And today ain't no walk in the park, for at least 3 British soldiers (2 dead, 1 wounded).

I don't get the whole "you're rewarding him" angle. He's dead. What does it matter whether he wanted it or not? He's not going to see any of it; the publicity won't affect whether he does this again. I can go with the argument that the over-broadcast of all this can influence other people who are messed up. But he, himself, is dead.

#38 (it just seems rude to address you as "Wench"): Excessive coverage of the VA Tech killer will help inspire the next well-armed attention-seeking psychopath who dreams of living forever in infamy.

Oh come on Schmader,
And so will the new death metal album. You're sounding a bit like Tipper Gore here.

Tipper Gore is hot! As much as Al is a dork, let's hope he's gettin that porkpie once a week.

With any luck, it also might just as well cause someone to call attention to the next well-armed attention-seeking psychopath BEFORE he follows through on his dream.

Yeah, these pictures are really going to help alert us to more mentally ill Korean 23 year old men with hammers and semi-automatic handguns. Give me a break. These photos of Cho don't teach us anything useful about what happened, and really don't serve any purpose other than getting a looksie at the guy who killed a bunch of innocent people earlier this week. How does looking at his pictures or hearing his bizarre mentally ill ramblings on audio/video help us "confront" anything we didn't already know or suspect about this guy?

Josh, the media, including yourself, circulating these pics and serve no "journalistic" purpose and yes, it is insensitive to the victim's families and friends. I guess for people that have had enough we'll just have to scroll past this stuff or change the channel until the next sensational thing happens.

people can be mean. kids included.

abcdefg,

Right, great coping strategy: continue to ignore it, and everything will be all flowers and bunnies again, just like it never happened.

Until the next time it does, of course.

If only one person gets some sort of psychiatric help as a result of somebody recognizing they exhibit similar behavioral dysfunctions as did Cho, wouldn't it be worth it?

Re: Josh @ 40: If you mean I'm expressing myself using words in English, why, yes, I do sound like Tipper Gore.

Let's not mix our metal metaphors here: The PMRC case I imagine you're referring to concerned claims that a Judas Priest record drove a kid to suicide.

If the VA Tech killer had been just a suicide, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

Instead, he massacred 30 people en route to suicide—and I don't think it's a stretch to think that a desperate bid for eternal notoriety was involved in his decision to take so many innocent people with him. (The VA killer's name-checking of the Columbine killers and his motherfucking mid-massacre press pack are just icing on the cake.)

I don't think you're an evil person for including that picture in your Slog post. I just hate having that fucker's face on the Slog, for a lot of the same reasons I would hate to have a photo of a pile of shit on the cover of the paper.

And yes, I hate the idea of egging on future desperate psychos who might think eternal infamy is preferable to whatever psychotic pain they're suffering through. If that makes me Tipper Gore, I'm Tipper Gore.

I'm so sick of seeing that shithead's picture today, particularly all those fucking stupid poses with his gun pointed at me. It's all over the AP and Rueters... damn... I had hoped The Stranger might at least try do a little better.

You assholes know that posting those photos is more sensationalism than journalism (or whatever you wanna call it - blogism ). It's that kind of bullshit misdirected attention that helped inspire that fuckhead.

You guys have the common courtesy to not put overtly erotic pictures on this slog - just politely identified links - So, please, do the same for this Cho shit.

Would that be so fucking hard?

But doesn't anyone care about Lexington/Concord?

Schmader: You're probably right, I may have been mixing my metal metaphors. There was, however, a metal record that was blamed for some psychotic murders. Perhaps it was a Metallica record.

And wasn't my fave band Marilyn Manson blamed for Columbine?

I'm just using Tipper Gore as shorthand for the urge to place the blame for pre-existing psychotic behavior on the media: records, movies etc...

If someone is fucked up enough to take ABC's footage as a "green light" to shoot up another school, I imagine they don't need ABC's "green light" in the first place.

That is: Rick James didn't make kids have sex and Tipper Gore knew it.

josh: I think you're referring to Kill' em all. If only they had stuck with the original title, "Metal Up Your Ass" these things would never happen.

comte---Nice condescending attitude. Who said anything about ignoring this situation? How the fuck is posting Cho's hammer wielding photo or his two fisted Tomb Raider gun pose going to make shit like this stop? When has the media exploiting a tragedy ever stopped this kind of behavior? If you've been paying any attention to this story at all, his disturbed behavior was noted by many people long before this happened, and for many reasons they failed to stop what ended up happing. What I'm talking about is sensationalizing this bullshit. So, fuck off you very much, I have no problem facing unpleasant realities of life thank you. I don't live my life with my head in the sand or with my head up my ass like it seems you do. Please continue enjoying your infotainment tragedy porn.

Well, for one thing, maybe next time people who see the warning signs they might have previously failed to heed, might, um, you know, heed them.

And really, get some perspective. Showing a picture of this sad, lonely, terribly fucked up individual isn't sensationalism, it's legitimate news reporting. People want to know who this person was, what drove him to commit this heinous act of brutality, what might be done the next time to prevent a similar occurance; all legitimate questions, and ones that not only should be, but need to be asked. That's what reporters are supposed to do, ask those questions, try to discover answers, if there are answers to be had, because, if it can happen someplace like VT (or Columbine or wherever), then it can happen anywhere, and people want to understand the why of it, so that they can at least try to make sense of a senseless act.

Your anger is misdirected; it's just an image, it can't hurt you, although I imagine there are some pretty nasty things you would do to Cho if you had the chance. But, even if you could, it wouldn't bring any of his victims back to life, so what's the point of getting all worked up over it?

If you have to feel something, why not feel grief for his victims, some sympathy for their loved ones, and some relief for those who survived? Why waste your hatred on the reflection of a ghost? He's way beyond your ability to harm him.

and up jumped the swagman and sprang into the billabong while watching how his penis patches got wet at http://www.averagepenis.mysize.ws