Seung Cho had 99 problems but a bitch ain't one

Cho was Asian...

Cho was disturbed...

Cho was an immigrant...

This is the retoric with which the nation is reacting to the virginia tech shootings.

Bellatrys lays the connections down between this set of shootings, the history of randomised gun killings, and our post-9/11 responses to revenge ourselves upon afghans and iraqis with... randomised killings.

Of course while everyone else is psychoanalysing crappy vent fics by Cho, I think I'll focus on psychoanalyising the nation itself.

Because for one thing, the context in which he wrote those are gonna get retconned to make him fit into easy stereotypical conceptions of the lone gunman.

Of course as with all other past shootings, the proceedings are quickly devolving into what is hard to describe as anything other htan a good old fashion freak show.

Here's what Fox has on it's front page right now:


"A Loner", "Disturbed Writings", "Quietly Seethed"...

Aside from the way FOX has decided that a woman sniffing some purple panties should be the face of the virginia shootings hysterics (unless prince was somehow involved)... It's also funny how, year after year after year after year after year these things occur and yet, despite the fact that the gunmen are always revealed by our benevolent news media to be the stereotypical Wolfman Lone Gunman, and there's never a lack of apparent warnings about the state of mind of these monsters... they still happen.

Of course once you're portraying something that horrifies you as monstrous, and describe it using the same route narrative structures and memetic constructs you used the last time some horribly monstrifiable event occurred you're acting in a way that most psychologists would describe as "compulsive" if it's how you react to something.

And the thing is that the more I think of it, the compulsive disassociation that tends to mark the national reaction to these events is pretty normative for it's reaction to anything that's salaciously horrific, the attention of the news orgs seems...to...slip past the true horrors, and cut everything down into simple, pre-existing, concepts, each of which do the exact same thing to all the wildly different topics they're used to cover - whether it's terrorism, or war or whatever - put emotional distance between the readers and the events that unfold, the world gets cut down into peices because if you focus on one shard of the mosaic you can't see the bigger picture and so don't have to deal with the full implications of it all.

There are probably thousands upon thousand of "loners" in this nation, seething and festering and undoubtably entertaining wonderfully histrionic revenge fantasies* - however only one of them shot up Virgin Tech on monday, but even a passing familiarity with the news media would tell you that despite the fact that him being a loner was probably only at best partially the issue with him going postal, this is the probably going to be the core aspect of the reporting of the massacre.

Of course the point of that is to of course mark him clearly as outside the community, outside the connections that would place an obligation upon the community he lived in to either have some way of dealing with people who were as socially disfunctional as Cho was, or to at the very least attempt to find solutions to this recurring problem - not to shift the "blame" as the news orgs are doing when they're not monstrifying Cho, which of course is just another way to disassociate from the tragedy, except instead of Cho being the Outsider, the victims or the school for whatever reason, because if we can peg someone with the blame and Other them, then we can absolve ourselves of any responsibilities we as a society have for what went on that day.

However, let me point out that no matter how I look at the events that day, the school authority could be said to have done anything but fucked up after the shootings began - the hyperfocusing on the "domestic dispute" hypothesis, combined with the apparent blase attitude towards the fact that there was, no matter how you cut it or interpret the initial murders (which included both a man and a woman, and thus makes the whole domestic dispute excuse somewhat nonsensical), a murderer loose upon the campus.

Now you don't need to have a magic 8ball to realise that not warning people that there was an armed killer who wasn't particularly picky about who he killed, and that the VT authorities dropped a rather large ball that turned out to be filled with 30 corpses inside it on that count.

But here's the thing: VT's problems are the nation's problems.

That's what's missing in so much of news coverage, it's so rife with this constant compulsive need to disassociate the readers and viewers from whatever is being covered - not just geographically or emotionally, but socially as well.

This is very interesting because newsmedia and the rightwing especially use disassociation very selectively, and quite maliciously.

You see, the VT authorities' reaction to the shooting didn't just happen - there was a cause, a cause made of a smidgin of racism coupled with a soup con of misogyny on top of a big heaping pile of the it-could-never-happen-heres all of which mean that instead of two murders and a suicide that VT would have been hard pressed to stop, we've got 30 more dead, taking with them not just their personal futures but ideas and concepts and knowledge that will probably have to be recovered from wherever the students and professors killed last decided to write down their notes.

The disassociation from people like cho, and the victims and the events last monday, is the reason why we'll probably have another similar tragedy as a result of the it-could-never-happen-heres - the media Othering of not just the killer, not just the victims (who's personalities are erased quite neatly by all the 2-Dimensional and deeply objectifying "tributes" to the dead while the Pundits are musing on what the victims did wrong, like they foolishly jumped in front of the bullets for giggles and shit or something) but of the event itself.

I didn't pick the term "freak show" up thread as an empty perjorative, the media disassociation of these events, their perpetrators and the victims is the velvet rope or the glass barrier seperating the freaks from the audience - it marks the clear Us/Other dichotomy that is essential if you're gonna suppress any sort of feedback either into teh greater society as a result of the event, or into the specific society that it occured in as result of the greater society's reaction to the event that trickles down to the focus point for all the waves that would otherwise be created by the central event itself.

And what's interesting is that this effect extends far beyond the VT shootings, and is present in the reporting of things ranging from the various middle eastern crisii to Imus or Kramer's respective bigotry blowups.

In the Kramer incident we get this wonderful effect whereby, when he starts making jokes about lynching black members of his audience, the white majority audience hoots and laughs but then he says "nigger" and suddenly, BAM! The trained disassociation kicks in, as suddenly he is marked as outside and other.

Which is a wonderful way to deal with the problems of societal racism, you know, by always marking anyone who says the wrong trigger phrase - not the horrible concept that black folk should shut up and be thankful that they can be in the presence of white folk without getting lynched, oh no - as outside the racist society itself so that their actions can't be linked to any sort of wider propensities towards racism that is posessed by soceity itself.

This of course means that this whole disassociation dance that is so apparent in Cho's treatment by the news orgs, is yet another aspect of Political Correctness.

And of course it works in reverse too, because once you're able to just randomly declare members who, by any sane way of reckoning things, are actually part of the community and society they get disassociated from by the pundits and media, it becomes equally easy for those same pundits and media to associate people with groups and people who they are in no way connected with.

Of course the greatest trick involved in that is to of course create or adapt mythical groups that permeate the racist, sexist, heteronormative and cisgender dialogue, and attach things or behaviors or people to those groups - and then when you want to say attach behavior that you want ot present as abbarent among a favored community to some community of people who are targeted for hate - Imus is a classic example of this because not only did he try to excuse his actions by declaring that "the black community" said stuff like that all the time**, but the media coverage of that event played into that and linked his behavior, and hence himself considering that people are defined by their actions, into the "black community" (whatever taht is).

Which is why when a racist asshole tries to get a public appearance with an african american, and I'm talking largely to you jackson and sharpton, as though you were the frigging pope of the negros and able to absolve him of all sins - DON'T DO IT! No person from an Othered group can absolve a white person of being a racist, forgiveness can be given, but there's no real point to it other than to get you to shut up about it - but for the rest of us white folk, those connections to the black community are crucial becuase they absolve his listeners and the station and the entire rest of society from any responsbility for finding his bullshti to be perfectly acceptable until he tripped over the PC phraseology that requires this complex system of othering.

becuase what the media did was paint imus up in black face - which doesn't say "imus is racist" as hamsher and billmon thought blackfacing would do becuase htey're idiots who didn't bother to even try to research the nasty little concept they were using, but labels imus as black, I.E. Non-White and thus outside the confines of any greater need for the other white folk that made Imus to accept guilt or repsonsibility for making Imus pretty normative for public figures these days.


And this all again applies to the virginia shootings just as much - they declare Cho to be korean or a loner or a nut case, and then they say "We Are VT" and all that other trite bullshit that serves to assure people that they are affected by the shootings as much as those in VT are when they're not, nor could they be.

Imagine if instead of saying "we are VT" we talked about how "Those Around Us Are Cho" in the wake of this tragedy, and we faced up the pain and anguish and challenges this tragedy presents us now...
Could such a thing happen again in that sort of country? Probably, but would it happen as often, and would as many people die?

I doubt it somewhat. And mores to the point, not even trying, not even attempting it, demonising Cho and disassociating from both the tragedy and him, is plain Wrong, no matter how you look at it, no matter you religion or faith or personal ethics, marking him apart when pretty much anyone could have been that 33rd body on the VT campus if only things had been slightly different.

Jesus said*** that as we treat Cho, so do we treat Jesus himself, something a so called "christian nation" and those people who presume to act in His place seem to have forgotten.

Those of us with actual morals and who actually truly feel for the survivors, and weep for them and the dead equally, cannot, and are unable to forget that.

God is long dead to America, and has taken any Beauty this country might have with it, but these scum bags can't take the beauty from our hearts, not if we don't let them - Cho was Jesus, as indeed we all are, and while we still walk and refuse to falter or give up that sacred duty, God walks with us.

* Though of course, the way I'm reading his plays is with the violent swearing protagonists as the people around him who he bitches at in his suicide note, not as himself, and with the step dad from the mr McBeef play being a representation of himself - put upon, trapped and abused by those around him, which fits neatly with the usual Nice Guy messia complex, and even portrays a stereotypical undeserving "jerk" archetype as getting the affection of the single woman figure in that play, while the poor suffering guy is hated and killed by those stuck up assholes who seems so skilled at getting everyone to listen to them and not him.

But on the gripping hand, describing a guy who shot up a school as "a Nice Guy" probably breaks some sort of law about hyper-irony. Rain on your wedding day this is not, but still, a guy who goes around and acts put upon because the world isn't acknowledging his mediocre commitment to social norms of politeness and is basically fetishing how people around him break the alleged social standards of behavior that he holds himself to is far from the sane side of the crazy dichotomy.

** And while I've bitched at Chris Rock in the past for adding to the acceptability of that excuse because he misused the term "nigger" somewhat, it has to be remembered that it's not actually his fault white people are racist assholes who cling to that to justify their bigotry - no african american ever owned a white person, let alone was responsible for their actions and until I have reason to believe it's fair to think that's changed, anyone who tries to pretend that black people are responsible for white folks' actions is a really big fool. Really big.

*** I get really preachy here, don't worry, I've not gone christian again, but the language I'm using expresses what I feel as accurately as I can express otherwise - I think of jesus as a rather secular figure technically, and God as something a damn sight more complex and deep and spiritual than a mere guy with a beard who occasionally waffles about knitting sea monsters (or something) if you question him, so read this bit in that light or at face value if you are a christian.

A correction, and something for the Ignorant and otherwise hard of thinking out there

First of all, I realise I kept calling whatsiface Donohue "donohoe" in that last post, this was not as a way to make a cheap pun or to besmirch the name of prostitutes by comparing them to that stain, but was a sincere error on my part.

My apologies to all hoes.

Second off, I finally found out why that Duke Rape quote from amanda was referred to by WaPo, here's from the comments at Comment is Free:

I don't know enough about McEwan's previous writing to comment on the dispute, but I have very little sympathy for the other ex Edwards blogger Amanda Marcotte. If she was unfairly smeared as anti catholic then no doubt that is bad but it is not nearly as serious as the smears she was still spreading about the falsely accused Duke Lacrosse players whom she was calling rapists months after anyone could still believe that, at the very least her lack of respect for the truth is startling.

Perhaps it is only a smear campaign when people are making accusations against pampared bloggers, but when the smears are about the victims of bogus rape accusations then it is simply 'fierce feminists' offering strong opinions.

In short if you dish it out you must learn to take it.

Emphasis mine.

Now I'm just gonna ignore that "dish it out" bullshit, because last I checked (in my local reality at any rate) death threats was not the equivalent reaction to someone stating their view of the duek rape case, nor do the rich pampered bleached assholes who joke about flaying strippers alive for giggles and shit really need to be defended - as ankh morpork assassin's guild notes, while they will only accept contracts on the lives of people who can readily defend themselves from such contracts, anyone who has enough money to hire someone to defend them can be considered to be able to defend themselves - and so too were the Duke Rapists readily able to whip out high priced and soulless legal eagles to protect them all from the vile evils of a poor black stripper. Compare this to a feminist blogger's ability to defende herself from threats against her life - and anyone with brains enough to think knows that a threat to their life is nothing less than a threat to the lives of all their loved ones as well, because htey can't afford to be wrong about any silly notions they might have that a person who lacks morals enough to make a death threat has just enough morals to limit their any attempst to kill them only to them and not their immediate family, friends and pets. It ain't stupid for a person to defend themselves, fuck Kant, which in this particular case meant resigning.

But, putting all those things aside, the idiot there does highlight an all too common misconception about the american legal system:

A trial does not prove a person is "innocent", nor does it prove that they have been "falsely accused".

The legal process in america works like this; the court assumes a priori - that is, before any evidence by either side is put forth before the court - that those accused of a crime are guiltless - innocent is what it's called in the colloquial so that legal types and jurors know how they should treat the accused, basically they are not allowed to presume guilt prior to the trial itself, they are however not really supposed to assume that the accuser is a evil conniving whore - the court also assumes a priori that she is not making a false accusation, despite that being the logical conclusion that would be drawn from the accused being assumed "innocent" precisely because the accused is assumed "guiltless" rather than actually "innocent" - the juror and court is supposed to be as impartial and fair as is humanely possible.

This means, in the end, that the court does not even attempt to "prove" anyone "innocent", it instead places the entire burden of proof upon the prosecution - this is why trials that turn up a "not guilty" verdict do not immediately put the accuser on trial for a false claim or wasting police and the court's time, by putting forth a "not guilty" verdict the court is not saying; "this person(s) is innocent", they are instead saying; "meh, (s)(t)he(y) may have done it, but irregardless of all that, the prosecution could not prove, note emphasis, to the standard of evidence that this court requires that the accused was definately guilty."

This subtle distinction can be found with even a quick look over the language used by courts.

For instance, compare these two words; "not guilty" and "innocent".

You may notice that the first once is spelt with an "n", an "o", a "t", a space, a "g", a "u", an "i", an "l", another "t" and finally a "y", while the other isn't.

Feminists who aren't directly on the jury are not held to the same standard of evidence as the court, and can fucking well look at things like the victim being offered a million large to shut up and go away by the defense, note her refusing that, and then make the obvious conclusion that she is either A) clinically insane to degree that the defense would have used such a condition against her with actual honest to god medical witnesses pronouncing her "three fries short of a happy meal" (to use the technical term) and B) telling the truth and was sexually abused in a seriously traumatic manner by several members of the duke lacrosse team, who also decided that it just wasn't fucked up enough and so also decided to racialize the assault as well, and make sure she didn't get ideas above her color.

I view rape trials with the question "why the fuck would this person lie for Sweet Chocolate Cthulhu's sake!?" burning in my mind, rather than to the court's standard, which was even more fucked up in this case because she had to provide proof not that she was raped, but she was raped in a manner that the court recognised as rape.

I of course wouldn't want the courts to assume my standard of "why would they lie though?", because it's not a fair standard for a court to use by any degree, but I also don't particularly like people calling the victim a lying whore because she couldn't prove, without a shadow of a doubt no less, that she was raped in this specific way, and so the rapist scumbags got off because they raped in this over way that the court classed as crime No.45569678/A.

That's also not fair, nor impartial, and of course slanted the whole thing towads the defense, and while the standard of "guiltless until proven otherwise" also does this to a small degree, the bullshit word lawyering that got the rapists off in this case meant that, no matter what had happened, the prosecutor couldn't have ever proven guilt because of the undue and biased standard of proof the rape victim was asked to provide.

And of course the saddest thing of all is that such a ridiculous standard being used in a rape trial is far from uncommon, or unusual, and in fact heads towards being standard practice for the systematic and common secondary assault upon rape victims who dare get uppity and foolishly try to get the system to administer something akin to justice.

And don't get me started on the fact that the so called "innocence" of the rapists is based largely on the overblown wind-baggery of the defense, who proclaimed every bit of non-proof-of-innocences as actual proof of innocence, and strangely enough no one who calls the victim a liar seems to recall how many time such examples of the defense's wind-baggery was slapped down rather easily by the defense, if reality in and of itself didn't make their claims fatuitous and inane in the extreme.

Nor do they note that the defense is legally stopped from fighting such media pandering wind-baggery with equivalent news conferences, even while they point to such absences as undeniable proof of her guilt as the entirely defenceless stripper was accused of every manner of evil the defense could think up to throw at her.

If you didn't know any of those facts before you commented on the duke rape case, please kindly shut the fuck up, no one likes to see someone be ignorant all over themselves.

They certainly don't want to clean up the mess afterwards. The john is that way if you really must spew your nastiness, just don't ask me to hold your hair back while you do, because quite frankly you sicken me even when you're not blowing chunks of recycled shit all over the place.