Another tragedy
Once again, our nation has been struck by a tragedy that hit one of our universities. Northern Illinois University, a busy campus with an enrollment of 25,000 students is about an hour drive due west from Chicago. Why does this happen? These type of tragedies did not occur even twenty years ago. There have been three shootings in schools this week! And it is not like there is only one type of college where this happens. NIU is a party school, kind of in the middle of nowhere in the Midwest. Virginia Tech, is a wealthy, engineering school, in Blacksburg, VA. This type of tragedy could happen anywhere, U of MN, Iowa State, Bard… Anywhere. But why does this happen? Murder has been around since the beginning of time, but this is not a simple case of premeditated murder. It’s not like some former lover was jealous and killed his ex girlfriend. No, in this instance, a former NIU student walked onto the stage of a lecture hall with 165 students in class, pulled out one shot gun and two handguns and started firing at random people. My guess is that this kid was a loner. He felt there was nobody out there who cared about him; nobody out there who would listen to his problems. He craved the attention that our media lavishes on celebrities. Not just the famous, but the infamous. Cho, the Virginia Tech murderer had his mug plastered all over the cover of Newsweek, Time, U.S. News, NY Times, et cetera. He went beyond famous and his name will forever live in infamy. That is what the NIU killer wanted… infamy. I ask all media organizations to do their due diligence and report the story the best they can but absolutely do not release any information about the killer. Dylan and Klebold. Those are two more names that will live in infamy as they were the Columbine killers. Our media does not make them celebrities but does give them the attention they want. There are many factors that come into play? Where were the parents? Where were his friends? Was he taking any medications? Should he have been? Was he doing any hard drugs? Could LSD or meth factored in? I hope to find out all of this but at the same time I do not wish to know a name or anything about this kid. My thoughts and prayers are with the whole NIU and Dekalb, IL community.
1. Kanye West just announced his tour dates. If tickets aren’t that outrageous, I am considering going. I haven’t been to a concert in months. I’m ready.
2. I have been thinking a lot about who John McCain should ask to be his running mate. Will he conservative and satisfy his base and nominate one of the South Carolina senators. This would bring in more volunteers and money for his campaign. Will he continue his moderate campaign and ask someone like Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty to be his man. Pawlenty has been very loyal to McCain. He’s fiscally conservative and socially moderate. He might be a good fit. Will he satisfy the corporate republicans and name Steve Forbes as his VP candidate. Forbes is brilliant economically and would make a lot of the small business owners, and fat cat GOP donors very happy. But what about Condi Rice as a dark horse candidate. What better way to defeat Obama or Hillary then to have a VP candidate who is black and female. Not only that she is highly educated (former president at Stanford), has the experience as secretary of state to be an ambassador, shares McCain’s views as a tough, hawkish, foreign policy person. Plus, maybe more importantly, has no plans to run for president and would go with McCain simply for a love of the country. I may disagree with Ms. Rice, but it is hard to not respect her.
posted by cyclonejohn @ 9:24 AM
6 Comments:
1. Nice job catering to your readers (U of M, bard). Haha.
2. How much? I would enjoy that. I've been looking for concerts lately.
3. I hope it's Pawlenty. I like him. Interesting call on Rice though...
What aspiring journalism would not cater to their readers? I'll look into the cost of Kanye tickets.
Never mind about the Kanye West tickets. The CHEAPEST tickets for the upper deck are $50 a ticket (of course not including ticketmaster fees.) That's too much.
I think it's a lot less likely to happen at a place like Bard, actually. Bard is an island of misfits. Nearly everyone there was a loner or a loser in high school. Nearly everyone went to Bard to escape that. Bard is a very open and accepting place. The administration is not always the most conscientious about being attentive to the mental health and emotional needs of its students, but I'd like to believe that Bard's almost all-inclusiveness (as long as you're not a conservative . . .) to an extent insulates it from events like this. It has serious problems, but it is a much more welcoming place for most individuals than most communities I've ever been a part of.
I have a very easy time not respecting Condoleezza Rice. She's an obviously intelligent, well-educated person who lends her talents to an administration that persists in deceiving, misleading and spying on the American people, devaluing and destroying the lives of Americans and Iraqis alike, completely demolishing the Geneva Conventions, justifying torture, underfunding education and health care for children, promoting inaccurate and dangerous sex-education policies, bashing GLBTQ people and communities, creating a society in which serious debate takes place over whether or not a pharmacist has an obligation to fill a woman's birth control prescription if he or she finds it personally objectionable while serious debate is also going on over whether or not a convicted sex offender has a right to a prescription of Viagra. Condoleezza Rice is part of an administration that was put into office not by popular vote or the vote of the electoral college, but by the Supreme Court, that has almost certainly attempted to disenfranchise populations that are politically dangerous to them (ie black people, among others) and that invokes the Mandate of God as its justification for its lies, its manipulation, its egregious and ongoing violations of human rights, US citizens' rights, the separation of church and state and the Constitution. . . . I respect integrity, and as far as I can tell, she has none.
As usual Emilia you hit it right on the head with Condi Rice. However, as an observer of politics for both major political parties, I wuld find Ms. Rice to be a much more fascinating VP nomination then some random senator from South Carolina.
Agreed, but politics isn't a spectator sport. It has very real implications for the citizens of this country. I'm not interested in who's the most fascinating, I'm interested in who's going to be the best for the country, as I determine "best." Condoleezza Rice has not been good for this country. Do I see your point about her being a politically savvy running mate for McCain? Absolutely. That's what scares me. That and the prospect of anyone from this administration surviving to continue their agenda of deception beyond this election.
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