04.19.07
making sense of the senseless
Last Monday, a very lonely, severely mentally disturbed man opened fire in a Virginia Tech classroom, ending the lives of 32 bright and promising students. Immediately, news crews from around the country descended on Blacksburg. President Bush along with his wife came shortly after to pay their respects. House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, called for a moment of silence.
I watched in horror and grieved for the parents of those young men and women whose lives ended that day. The next day, as our nation was still trying to make sense of the Virginia tragedy, now prominently labeled the worst mass murder in our history, more than 170 people died in Iraq.
What happened in Virginia last Monday happens in Iraq every day. Let’s imagine the unimaginable now: A mass shooting like the one in Virginia, happening here on our soil every day. This tragedy in Blacksburg really brought it home.
On the daily basis we hear of young American and Iraqi lives ending in Baghdad. Granted, it is a very different conflict but the cost is ultimately the same—someone’s dreams, hopes, ambitions, disappearing with a shot, a bomb, an accident. Yet we, Americans, are becoming more and more desensitized to murder. One difference however is that the House Speaker isn’t observing minutes of silence, and our President isn’t attending funerals for the young American soldiers who lost their lives fighting this senseless war.
So what we do is analyze, research, try to get into the minds of the killers, in other words, we try to make sense of the tragedy. When we can’t make sense of the tragedy, we resort to partisan politics, backstabbing, and infinite punditry. In the midst of all the infighting within our government, more and more lives are being lost on the daily basis.
Maybe this would be a good time to stop and think about how inconceivable, unfair, and utterly tragic it is to have someone’s life vanish before our eyes. And it doesn’t ultimately matter whether that life was in Blacksburg Virginia, Baghdad, Darfur, East Timor, Israel, or anywhere else.
04.09.07
Pundit’s ego at the expense of tolerance
Racist remarks have been flying out in the open all over cable networks lately. Some fine examples that come to mind: Glenn Beck, one of the more outrageously bigoted figures on TV asking the first Muslim congressman if he’s “working with our enemies;” John Gibson on FOX calling on all white people to have more babies to prevent the horror of having black and brown people from becoming the majority population by 2020. In the latest racist slur—Imus’s describing the women’s basketball team at Rutgers as “nappy-headed ho’s.” As David Carr writes in Monday’s New York Times, Mr. Imus’s slur was “the kind of unalloyed racial insult that might not have passed muster on a low-watt AM station in the Jim Crow South.” Aside from the fact that these comments create publicity nightmares for network executives and the hosts themselves, what kind of a message are these networks really conveying to the public?
Sure, these guys are clamoring for ratings and trying to get attention. This, however, is the case where bad publicity is bad publicity. Message boards are raging about Imus’s comments. But I wonder about not just the reaction of the public, but the larger picture these racist statements are really exposing. Racism and intolerance show pundits’ own need of sensationalizing the news and their ego, thus resorting to bigotry and ignorance instead of educating and inspiring the public. In reality, the media is increasingly becoming a divisive force in the public, whereas in my understanding, it should do the opposite. I think it is the liberal pundits who have to be especially careful. If we want to put a Democrat in the White House in 2008, we have to tighten up our message and unite the public behind solid and factual reporting and non-biased debate, free of racist, ludicrous or illogical statements.
04.08.07
How Arianna Huffington Missed the Boat.
Arianna Huffington called Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the most “reasonable guy in the room,” this week because of his kind treatment of the British soldiers during their 13 day stay in Iran. “President of Iran was preaching forgiveness and making the diplomatic gesture of releasing the 15 British sailors,” writes Huffington.
Now, let’s get this straight. Iran used the sailors as a tool in negotiations with the British. At the end of the day, both sides used diplomacy and averted a potential conflict. However, when the hostages were to be released, Ahmadinejad didn’t hesitate to stage fifty cameras around himself to capture every moment of him shaking hands with his captors. The smiley leader of Iran acted like the greatest host, sending the sailors off with a big warm smile. Doesn’t Ms. Huffington see this shameless act of publicity for what it is?
I am not opposed to giving props to Iran, or whomever, for their diplomatic efforts. Something tells me our warmongers in Washington would have used very different tactics to free our guys if they were captured in Iran. In fact I think it is Tony Blair who deserves a big round of applause for his firm resolve, yet unfailing politeness. At the end of the day, Mr. Blair is the one who earned the title of “the most reasonable guy in the room”. Huffington’s post begs the question—regardless of one’s political beliefs and convictions, shouldn’t common sense prevail above all?
