Letters to the Editor
David Schlaefer
Published Letters: 29 Editor's Choice: 3
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Irresponsible
[Read the article: "It's like when 9/11 happened"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It is very disappointing to see SALON stoop this low. Regardless of the predictable rantings of a few marginalized “racist screeds,” there is clearly not going to be any “backlash” against Koreans or Korean-Americans. That holds for the VT campus and for the country as a whole. This article is really an exercise in fear mongering and an unworthy attempt to politicize a terrible tragedy. Leave the VT community alone and save the polemics for another time.
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International Student
[Read the article: "It's like when 9/11 happened"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I think the only reason that VT students and others whose reactions have been reported in the press refer to Cho as an "international" or "foreign" student is because that's how the major news networks depicted him. I doubt many people yesterday knew that he had been in the US since age 8 and was a longtime US resident and probably as American culturally as anyone born in the States. The group of people I ate lunch with yesterday were still under the impression that the early reports stating the shooter was a Chinese national issued a J1 visa in Shanghai in 2006 were possibly correct.
When you hear the news depicting someone as a "Korean legal permanent resident student," it's natural to assume they are an international student, i.e., a student on a F1 visa in the States specifically to study. It's not evidence of white students (or anyone else) lumping him into a category of "foreigness" as an "other." They simply did not have all the information.
It's more an example of poor broadcast journalism; just as Eaton's article is poor print journalism.
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Hysteria
[Read the article: Killer reflection]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Conflation of Lo, Lu, and Cho?
The other cases happened almost 20 years ago. Perhaps it is understandable that some Asian-Americans whose memory reaches that far back search for similarities and "memes," but I haven't read or seen a single item in the mainstream press making such comparisons or even mentioning the other cases. Personally, I vaguely remember one (Lo) and don't even recall the other.
If you wade deep enough into the blogsphere, you can find any ugliness you want, and cite it as evidence of a racial backlash, along with "unconfirmed reports" of flag burning or threats; but that doesn't make any of this true. And suggesting that the Cho episode somehow illustrates a bizarre "whiz kid/yellow peril" dialectic in the way white Americans perceive Asian-Americans is pushing the bounds of credulity past the beaking point. Yellow Peril??!!
There seems to be an absolute hysteria developing on SALON and some other lefty sites about a phenomenon that just doesn't exist. Inexplicably desperate to find "racism" somewhere in this tragedy, every reference to the simple fact that this mentally ill young man was Asian or born abroad is parsed as evidence of cultural fear of the "other"; and when that doesn't suffice, specious "reports" or outright hypotheticals are posited as proof of some ugly cultural bias.
This is really becoming a theater of the absurd. No one is going to think reflexively of a quiet Asian-American male as a "potential spree killer!" No one is blaming Koreans, Korean-Americans, or anything to do with Asia for this tragedy. No one is using this incident to warn American society about the unassimilated yellow peril!
This entire dynamic simply does not exist anywhere but on these very pages. The Emperor has no clothes.
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Drama Queen Journalism
[Read the article: How little we know about Cho]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I think much of the desperation to "decode" the tragedy and--on the left--draw conclusions about race, gender, etc., stems from the simple fact that there's too much media space to fill. Fifteen years ago, how much coverage would there have been? No internet 'zines like SALON and scores of others, no 24/7 blanket coverage on multiple television networks, etc. There's an insatiable demand for content to fill up the ever-expanding ether; and there's only so much to really say. So we get ideological navel-gazing ad naseum and "analysis" spread so thin and shallow it quickly becomes self-referential and self-validating.
What's really weird and troubling is that Cho actually took the new media dynamic into account. He wanted to be famous. He made and sent his tapes in the hopes they would be plastered on every screen and monitor around the world, and he was right. I wonder how many fucked up little would-be killers will draw inspiration from that?
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Over the Top
[Read the article: My husband has Chinese ancestry but his son wants to keep it secret]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It's been a while since I've seen a letter on this thread that I thought was clearly bogus, but I have a tough time believing this is real. There are too many inconsistencies and oddities.
Simple DNA testing results don't come back stating that you have "Chinese" or "German" or "Tanzanian" ancestry! Only a few broad categories are involved, and someone with ancestors from China would simply receive a report that a certain percentage of their genetic make-up likely came from non-specific Asian or East Asian ancestry; and unless your, say, Icelandic, almost everyone will have a few surprises. Such is the human cycle of life, love, conquest, and migration.
Second, almost every adopted child has their adopting parents listed on their birth certificate if a new certificate is generated or requested; and when babies or small children are involved, it's standard practice. By definition, the adopting parents are now THE parents of the child. The remark about "how in the world" the parents managed that rings false.
Third, as another poster commented, the snarky comment about "evangelical Christians" seems really out of place. Where did that come from, and why was it necessary to insert that?
Fourth-- "Shep?" "Delores?" These are your chosen aliases? "Shep??"
I could go on with a few more items, but I'll stop. Too much Jerry Springer here.
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Get a Grip!
[Read the article: I'm younger than that now]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Dude, you seriously need to get laid and relax a bit. Leave the existential angst to Dostoevski. You could be in a foxhole outside of Fallujah; it's not so bad in comparison, is it?