Saturday, April 28, 2007

Imus & VaTech

Hey Folks,

Well, sorry it's been so long since my last article. I suppose I've been busy/lazy for the past month. It's just getting to be that time of year. School is almost over and I've got like 4 projects due and two finals within like 3 weeks. Bad scene. However, I'm at work right now avoiding the Sharks score and the NFL Draft coverage until I can get home and watch it on DVR.

Anyways, a lot of things have happened since I last wrote something, and I should probably have devoted a column for each incident, but I can't do that now. I'll just rant a few of my positions.

First is the Don Imus thing.

Let me start out by saying that I had never listened to this guy before. I had barely heard of him. From what I gather, he's a bit of a weirdo and a borderline shock jock. I'd see him every now and then on MSNBC in the morning, and I just couldn't really figure out what his deal was or whose side he was on, so I just ignored him, like most people do to MSNBC as a channel.

Then I heard that he made a racist comment, and everyone was up in arms about it. I watched with a wry smile as it went from an off-color inappropriate joke within the context of morning banter, to a full blown controversy. You know, one of those controversies where self-righteous, self-promoting minority wannabe preachers call for the head of a white man on a post/platter, and Democratic Congressmen blow more hot air than Mount Kiluea and call for investigations, and liberal bloggers go nuts. Yeah, one of those controversies.

I began to think about what Imus really said that was so bad.

"Nappy-headed hos."

Sorry, was I suppose to spell that out? Should I have spelled it like this?

"N***py-headed h*s"

Sorry, my bad. I didn't realize that I could be tar and feathered in a public square, lose my job, disgrace every caucasian on the planet, and cause deep hurt within every minority group in America. I definitely should have bleeped out the spelling.

Okay, so I'm not that insensitive, but I'm making a point. As weird or off-color as Imus was, he didn't say anything heinous. It was sexist, racially insensitive, and inappropriate. It was not racist, and he didn't deserve the firestorm.

He didn't say 'whore'. He didn't say 'ugly prostitute' and he certainly did not use the N word. If he had done any of those things, I'd be calling for his head too.

I think that commenting on the thuggish and let's say, not-that-pretty, appearance of some of the Rutgers players in an inappropriate way was not enough to get crucified in the media the way he was.

It's just a shame that people overreact like this. I understand that it is hurtful, and that it was wrong. But seriously, this was a witchhunt from word one. This was fueled by the liberal media and bastards like Al Sharpton who scare white people into doing whatever he feels like they should be doing.

Of course anyone in a cowboy hat nowadays is a villain. And somehow the Dixie Chicks parlayed their insults of the President and insults of their fans into a Grammy for an album that didn't sell, didn't get one iota of play on country radio, and a tour that didn't sell out one date.

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On a more serious note, I have to say something about the Virginia Tech thing.

I am truly appalled at the whole story. It just makes me sick. Of course, I ask the questions everyone else does: Why? How could someone do this?

Then I got to thinking about it, and thought, "That could've been me in that classroom getting shot, or trying to barricade a door with a table. This could happen anywhere!"

In the coverage afterward, you see all the talking heads on cable news demanding more on-campus security, and wondering how a guy could just walk into a classroom or a dorm building.

Well guys, since you haven't been on a college campus in 43 years, let me fill you in. You can walk anywhere into pretty much any building or any classroom that you want to with a backpack on. IT'S NORMAL.

What are we going to do now? Install $100,000 metal detectors with armed guards at all three entrances of all 75+ buildings on every college campus? Backpack searches, profiling?

I didn't think so. It simply cannot be done.

The nice thing about college campuses is that they are open; they're spread out. You just feel free to walk around unhassled. You can make a scene like the dykes, punks, and the rest of the nonconformist freaks, or you can blend in. Everything goes.

There is a dirty vegan hippie in one of my classes. She has disgusting dreadlocks, she weighs like 90 pounds because all she eats is carrots and tofu shavings, she smells like that gross oil that they put in their hair to make it matted and "nappy", and on top of it, she has hairy armpits and hairy legs. Then she asks the stupidest questions I've ever heard because she's so high all the time that her brain has gone to shit! But, I digress... and I'm not even sure if that tirade was relevant. Okay, regain your composure and read on.

I think what I meant was, you can stick out or you can blend in and slip through the cracks if you so choose.

That's what this freak did. He intentionally slipped through the cracks.

He didn't want any friends, he didn't want to be normal. He just wanted people to pay attention to him, but he didn't make any effort to reach out to anyone else. He just stewed silently in the back of the class, composing poems of death, and writing slasher plays, making obscene drawings, and taking upskirt shots of his classmates with his Nokia. The kid was a jerk, and a disturbed freak.

Somehow, even though he was scaring his classmates and professors, and even though a judge deemed him a danger to himself and mentally ill, he slipped through the cracks.

It's too easy for a loner to do something like this. They just disappear; almost live completely off the grid. Next thing you know he's in your engineering class with two handguns and shooting your friends.

I don't really know who to hold responsible here. Is it VaTech? Is it the legal system for not locking him up in a nuthouse? Is it the gun laws? Is it his parents?

I don't know. The blame gets spread around on this one I think. But, he's the one who did it. It wasn't the rich kids and their BMWs, it wasn't the girls who wouldn't talk to him, and it sure as shoot wasn't the Christians to drove him to this. It was him. He was sick, but he was smart enough to get into a good college. Sometimes the sociopaths are are the smartest ones; just like Hannibal Lecter.

My radical feminist/leftist/white-hating professor tried to make this a racial thing (of course). That the poor Asian kid got picked on and nobody "reached out" to him. Then she likened it to 9/11: "Now are we going to see hate crimes against Asians, and are Asians going to be profiled?"

Can you believe that someone that stupid is teaching a class? Just absurd.

Yeah lady, the FBI is going to start profiling strange quiet Asian students. I honestly can't think of a more harmless group of people. Other than Kim Jong-Il, streetracers, and organized Yakuza-type crime syndicates, Asians are completely harmless, hardworking people. And yes, I'm generalizing (big whoop, wanna fight about it?).

The moral of this story is that we just have to start profiling Asians and we can't make fun of female basketball players' hair.

Okay, I'm kidding, but seriously, Imus was a jerk, and this Cho character was an insane asshole who no one thought was capable of such an atrocity.

I only wish they'd captured him alive so we could enjoy the day that he got the needle in the great state of Virginia-- the state that took him in, the place where he had every opportunity to succeed, and the state where he ended so many bright futures, shattered so many lives, and disgraced his hardworking family. I'm still sick to my stomach just thinking about it; and you should be sick too.

Good talk. Wish is could be about more lighthearted topics. But on another note...

How bout them Sharks and Warriors?!!! Sports blog coming soon.