I must be a terrible person.. Their names are NOT "etched in my heart & mind"

[SoCalDem]

I feel terrible for the families, but personally , I have suffered no real loss.. No more of a loss than when a mother of 4 loses her fight to breast cancer or when a dad gets electrocuted at work, or when a child gets killed by a hit-and-run driver.

Death is death..

I resent the media when dramatic CRIMES are morphed into a psyche-wrenching morality tale.

YES..we all know that the "shooter" was a troubled wacko, but when our society continually throws people away and offers no intervention, can we really expect peace & tranquility from these people?

YES.. we all know how talented the victims were and how much their families loved them, but, when push comes to shove, they were strangers to most of us.

Do we feel compassion for their families? Yes. But a national grief-gasm over every wacko's last hissyfit, only encourages more of them to act out, in order to get that final bit of immortality they all seem to crave.

In death, they have achieved what they never could have in life, and our press gives it to them on a diamond-studded silver platter.

Every time one of these things happens, it starts all over again, and yet it always happens again..

[donco6]

1. Not a terrible person - just honest.

But watch out for the backlash.

[karlrschneider]

2. 76 US troops killed in the occupation this month.

:grr:

http://www.icasualties.org/oif/

[Solly Mack]

3. You're not terrible...after a certain point it becomes manipulation

it's not about the victims - it's about manipulating the audience

[panader0]

4. I must be bad too-- I say enough is enough when it comes to the msm

coverage. Was the interview with George Tenet cancelled tonight so that there could be more VT bloodletting?
And the deaths in Iraq, 70 something Americans and hundreds or thousands of Iraqis, what of them?

[JVS]

5. If you think you're bad PM me

[TomInTib]

6. I turned the teevee off for three days.

Turned it off so I wouldn't have to listen to the same old crap ad infinitum.

Turned it on three full days later and there it was, first thing.

Welcome to Chickenshit Nation.

The equivalent of two full 747s dies every day because of mistakes made in hospitals, alone.

[sarge43]

7. Thank you, SoCalDem

and no, you're not a terrible person. You're sensible and honest one.

[REP]

8. Shocking

Not your post - I agree with it completely. It's shocking thse crimes are turned into grief-gasms of the most voyeuristic sort, and how people keep going along with it. How many times - and for how many reasons - are the Columbine students still cconsulted?

[ends_dont_justify]

9. I agree. There must have been hundreds of non-gun homicides in the US alone that day.

There is a scientific estimate of how frequently someone in the world dies, and there was once an estimate of how much of that is homicide/suicide. If we take into account every non gun, non psychopath oriented crime that occurs every day in this nation we can see the problem is to crack down on crime and to help people in society, not watch the tv and bitch.

edit: spelling

[MedleyMisty]

10. You're not a bad person

I get what you're saying, I think.

Like I cried when I heard the stories on NPR and read some of them on here, especially about the 76 year old professor who held the door of the classroom while his students got out.

But for those of us who didn't know the victims, it's really time to move on and let the people who did know them grieve and heal in private.

At some point, it goes past honest and real compassion and becomes manipulation, propaganda, and waving the bloody shirt. It's like how Republicans answer everything with "9/11."

[Shakespeare]

11. Our culture has developed a really disturbing grief fetish.

It's shocking and upsetting, and I feel great sympathy for the families and friends of those who were killed, but I'm with you--at the end of the day, I don't know any of these people.

It's almost like a collective psychosis, and I find it repellent.

[Cabcere]

12. As a college student in VA with several friends at VT

(none of whom were hurt, thank God, although I feel awful for the families of those who were), the tragedy itself is etched in my heart and mind. Not necessarily the names, just the fact that it happened.

One name, however, has been burned into my heart - that of a young Marine whose funeral was two months ago today. :cry: So, yes, I understand what you mean.

[Djinn]

13. Grief voyuerism

has always existed (people who go to funerals of people they barely know for example) but it's now gone nuclear.

On the day 30 odd people were killed at VT nearly 25,000 died from malnutrition related causes.

I don't know anyone at VT and I don't weep at their deaths anymore than I do the millions of deatsh every day of people I do not know

[WildEyedLiberal]

14. I see people on DU who claim to actually cry for Iraqis killed in the war

So grief-gasms can be relative depending on what you are trying to accomplish with such a public display of grief, I suppose. It's far more likely that people in America will have known one of the VT students, or at least know someone who does. I agree with you about the crassness and manipulation of grief of the nonstop MSM coverage, but I think public displays of grief by total strangers in general are meant to communicate a lot more about who is doing the vociferous grieving than about the actual deceased, either to convey a political point (eg, people on DU "crying" over dead Iraqis or Republicans tearfully pleading for us to "remember 9/11") or to assure the world that you are compassionate.

That said, while I get your broader point, I think calling Cho's rampage a "hissyfit" is probably too flip. I know you aren't intending to demean the murders, and I'm not taking it as such, but using sarcastic language takes away from the valid point you make, IMHO. As for me... I have read as much as I can about the VT victims. As a college student myself, it's very easy for me to imagine myself in their shoes. I guess I feel more of a "cosmic" connection to these victims and their lives, even though I didn't know any of them personally. I understand if others don't feel the same way. I think it goes without saying that we all have compassion and sympathy for innocent people who die and you shouldn't feel guilted into rending your garments over every death if it didn't hit you in a particularly personal way. As you said, people die every day, many of them tragically, and there isn't an MSM sob-a-thon over every one.

[The Count]

15. If you are, so am I - I felt there was daily violence we cause in Iraq

as Ted Rall put it

[bobbolink]

16. "We're all in this together" "United We Stand" and other assorted bullshit

It's so very hard for all the people who are triggered in their grief by something like this, had no support when they went through their original experience of grief, and are once again alone with it.

I know from Columbine that many people not directly involved with the incident are triggered, but all the attention is focused on the incident, so the other people are once again left with nothing but crisis lines, or "toughing it out".

We are a really cold society, and putting on this act of compassion to make us feel more human.

It's really our *OWN* fears we are reacting to, and calling it "compassion".

[Roxy66]

17. I've been feeling guilty for changing the channel

when the news coverage switches to V.Tech. I feel like I am somehow contributing to the killers publicity fest by watching. It's really been over the top. I have hardly watched the news lately....and I'm a news junkie.

[SoCalDem]

18. I caught up on a lot of good lectures on UCTV and Link

and even watched HGTV ...anything to avoid the maudlin reporters sticking microphones in people's faces..

[butterfly77]

19. I feel the same...

I am wondering how long they will go on with the coverage...I can't watch anymore.

[gratefultobelib]

20. Good post, and obviously a lot of us agree with you. I even had to turn off NPR.

[catmandu57]

21. I'm numb, desensitized to death and destruction

I've witnessed so much death and destruction, wars, famines, genocides, natural disasters, that I just can't bring myself to feeling the shock and horror that people think I should, I hope this doesn't make me a bad person. I just can't find the outrage any more.

[BlooInBloo]

22. It's just a standard more-wounded-than-thou technique, designed to justify future atrocities.

[me b zola]

23. Thank you for this post

...I have been wanting to say the same, but I knew that if I waited there would be someone who would say it much more eloquently than I.