Letters to the Editor
-
Joan, you know the answer to your own question.
Aren't there enough interesting, respectable, credible Republican leaders to make the rounds?
No, there aren't. None, nada, nobody.
-
Maybe It's Simple
Maybe he was just a sick young man suffering from deep psychosis. Why does it have to be more than that? Sometimes people are just crazy.
I really am amazed by our desperate desire for explanations that will make all this fit into some metaphor for our society.
-
This Says It All
"The worst thing of all, the hardest to fathom, the most infuriating but the most important, is this: It literally means nothing. It is random, senseless, incomprehensible. We wish it meant something. It would feel better if it meant something. We try hard to manufacture something that it can mean. But it stubbornly means nothing. Literally, it is a sign of nothing, the nothing that surrounds us, the nothing we must face, the implacable end we come to."
`
CARY TENNIS
-
Mental illness, anyone?
Isn't it a forgone conclusion that Cho was mentally ill? Can we really be spending this much teeth-gnashing on society's role in making him pull the trigger? At most, the societal influences proposed thus far would stand as mere aggravating factors. The issues we should all be discussing here are how to diagnose and treat mental illness and how to prevent the mentally ill from obtaining weapons.
-
The Invisible Elephant
Mental illness.
Any citizen who has had to cope with serious mental illness in a friend or family member would've immediately suspected that Cho was deeply ill.
He spoke of "friends" from outerspace, for example.
He had a "lack of affect" -- didn't respond to overtures from others.
He had religious--Christ-like--delusions.
Etc. Etc. Etc.
All of these symptoms, as well as what was expressed in the videos, are classic signs of a paranoid schizophrenic psychosis. Which is a brain disorder which is characterized by chemical and physical abnormalities/symptoms.
The truth is the mental health options for these people (and their friends and family) are severly constrained under the current, for profit, health care system.
-
I'd Like To Know About Health Insurance Benefits
One of the articles I read about the Cho family said the mother got a job as a cafeteria worker because it had benefits. I'd like to know if it had mental health insurance and if so, did the Cho family use those benefits? I'd also like to know if the family had health benefits before the mother took that job.
Though we don't know a lot about the Cho's family life, it doesn't sound as if they took their son for counseling. Maybe they couldn't afford it if they didn't have health coverage. Maybe after they got health care coverage, it didn't cover many counseling sessions. I wonder if health insurance or lack of it resulted in the son not getting counseling.
-
a useful lesson
Rather than conclude that race freed Roy & Giovanni from rationalizing Cho's personality, it seems reasonable to allow that- as people who rely on subjective awareness as interpreters of literary experience - they took seriously how terribly ominous it felt in the presence of this boy.
No objective data, legal criteria, or yes/buts stood in their way. After decades of teaching, these professors sensed danger from this specific student and trusted their capacity to register his silent communication. They did not wobble about creative freedom; Giovanni unequivocally stated Cho was not writing poetry. Why weren't they taken seriously ? Perhaps this sort of emotional data has been overly marginalized and discredited.
Cho was severely ill. It appears he had been getting worse for awhile. Delusional states can co-exist with passing grades, personal hygiene, and organizing a massacre. As a psychiatrist and faculty member at UCB, I can attest to how reluctant people are to make use of interpersonal experience. We are told to be objective, create an assessment check list, to make sure we do not inflict prejudicial judgments or arbitrary stigma on a student whom is different. Yet I believe we all know the difference between wrongly flunking a student whose ideas are provocative from feeling afraid to be in a room alone with him.
Roy & Giovanni knew they were not making glib judgments or ignoring individual freedom. They felt danger. Their concern must now be recognized as valid and crucial for designing a more sound response next time - a response that isn't blunted by the emotional blindness of anxious administrators.
-
Religion?
"There's as much evidence that Cho's misery was caused by conservative Korean patriarchy as by liberal Western sexual mores."
There's one more thing that could be added to your list: religion. In all that rush to judgment about the Virginia Tech killings, somehow or other the news media and ring-wing bloggers failed to mention that the shooter was Christian, listened to Christian music (apparently, had a favorite song on repeat), and likened himself to a Christ-like figure in some of his rantings. And somehow or other there is no one making broad generalizations about all Christians being violent or terrorists or crazy. I guess they've learned some restraint over the years.... /sarcasm
Imagine if he had been Muslim (and someone did even assume that) and mentioned Allah in his rantings to NBC news. Or a goth kid and had mentioned Marilyn Manson. That would have been all over the news in huge, blood-red headlines, but because his religion was Christian, somehow that gets to pass unremarked.
-
Who cares?
When it's a shahid who blows a bus full of Hasiddic schoolchildren we chalk it up to who gives a shit? Guy's dead, lots of people dead, clean up the street move on, blame someone. Usually the victim, at least at Salon. Who cares why, whether his mommy drank or his daddy beat him or Mullah asshole sold him on the idea? Makes no which never mind either way. Life is hard, get a helmet.
-
It's So Simple...
Cho was probably a paranoid schizophrenic, like my brother. My family had the same dynamic as the Cho family. I was the smart older sister. Our family was poor and struggling, like the Chos. My brother was pulled out of his class in first grade. Something about him wasn't quite right. He was unresponsive and distant, but my parents weren't the kind of parents who could help him. Then he had his breakdown when he was about 17 and all hell broke lose. Luckily, he eventually got medicated before he hurt himself or someone else and is "okay" now.
All this analysis of Cho is pointless. There was a major chemical problem with his brain. As soon as I heard the story, I knew. When I saw the tapes of him and the anger on his face, it reminded me of someone else's face from years past: my brother's.