Two School Shootings, and an example of how Sick radio talk show hosts can be

[Mike 03]

What happened today was awful, but some of the discussions here regarding various other notorious mass shootings have reminded me of a most unfortunate and despicable chapter in talk radio, in late summer of 2006.

I wish I could name this talk show host, but I don't know for a fact who he was, only that he was on the air at the Denver radio station KOA, 850 AM, the so-called "blow torch of the West", at approximately 2am to 5am the day after the tragic hostage/murder situation at Platte Canyon High School in late September 2006, which resulted in in the death of a sixteen year old girl before the perpetrator shot himself.

ON EDIT: You might remember this case for this detail: the victim had the presence of mind to text her parents: "I love you."

Then, you might recall, a horrible tragedy happened a week or so later when some maniac took hostages at an Amish schoolhouse and eventually killed five girls (and then took his life, too).

What I heard on the radio (KOA and another station I can't name because I admire this talk show host too much and can't bear to name him) was this: smug, elderly, male talk-show hosts blaming teenage girls and Amish children for their own murders, because they lacked the gumption to fight back against their captors. ("Oh, if it had been me, I would'da grabbed the so-and-so and wrestled the gun from him, kicked him in the balls and blown his brains out. These girls should have done the same..." -- that kind of thing)

Can you believe this?

I was furious at the time. And although I am singling out the talk show host at the Denver Station, I also heard a talk show host in San Francisco make basically the same argument: If only the victims had had the soundness of mind to overtake their captors they could have saved their lives, and we should feel some indignation that they were not able to overcome their fears.

I don't know about you, but I have been in situations where I did fear for my life--and I was an adult, not a teenage girl or Amish 8-year old. And I shook like a damned leaf and blanked out and can barely even remember the event, let alone could I have attacked somebody with a gun under those circumstances.

This second guessing that we sometimes see about how victims "should have" handled this or that fatal situation is just another version of the old, scandalous argument that this or that rape victim deserved to be raped because of how she dressed, etc...

What happened today simply reminded me of how far we have come as a nation, to the sad state, in 2006, where some of our talking heads actually became angrier at the schoolgirl victims of the maniac killers than the maniacs themselves. Fortunately, I have not heard anyone blame the victims of today's massacre yet. I guess maybe if you are over the age of sixteen, you get absolved for responsibility for your own homicide.

[Berry Cool]

1. Don't be so sure of that. People blame victims of violent crime for not fighting back

because they really don't want to believe that if such a thing happened to them, they too might become casualties. Far more comforting to entertain Rambo-like fantasies about how "I woulda done this" and "I woulda done that."

None of us knows what we would do, confronted with such a situation, until and unless we encounter it. And truth be told, for the vast majority of us, the true answer would be "make it in my pants."

[rudy23]

2. They did it during Katrina on a mass scale

That should be the red flag that our nation has a sickness.