A Tragedy In Search of a Stereotype

When the dust settles and the TV cameras go to film another tragedy, all that will be remembered will be the young lives cut short, a handful of professors who died by their sides and the image of a lunatic who brought on this unspeakable carnage. And this is the way it should be.

For now, though, there is a human need to package this senseless bloody morning into something we can all understand. We do this because deep down inside all of us there is a need to put our normal thought process into the mind of a lunatic. We should all just stop because there is nothing normal and nothing sane about what the gunman did, and all the TV experts and resident psychologists getting airtime can just spare us their opinions. This was a kid consumed by evil who carried out the most despicable act of turning his evil on innocents.

Naturally it is difficult for the news media to come to grips with a simple and practical explanation. They want to say we live in a culture of guns; we do. They want to tell us our gun laws are too lax; they are. They want us to know he was a loner, a freak; and he was. They want us to examine the fact he was a South Korean immigrant; of course he was. They feel the need to question the administration and the campus police for their lack of premonition; but nobody could have predicted what would happen. They can’t understand why this kid wasn’t watched more closely based on his past behavior; there are hundreds like him on every campus.

What can be done to prevent this kind of sick event from happening again? Probably nothing, but we can learn from the things that aren’t so apparent and stop searching for the perfect stereotype to fit our preconceived biases. We’re much better off leaving this crazed kid in the same category as all mass murderers and mourn those who died. We’ll all sleep better knowing this particular mass murderer is a genetic mutant and in no way resembles 99.99 percent of the rest of us. Rest in peace to the victims.

Sorry I Forgot, Diane

Sorry Mrs. Laz, but I haven't been fair to Diane in this space for a while. It has been several months since I have placed a photo of her, and since I believe she is monitoring this site (along with her lawyers), I didn't want to disappoint.

A Nation Of Whores

I’m real sorry about the content of this post. The words are not mine; I don’t even know what half of them mean. These are the lyrics of three different rap artists and what they have in common is they are all produced under CBS’s Columbia Record label. As we all now know, this is the same CBS which fired the always less-than-polite Don Imus from his radio show for boorishly referring to the Rutgers woman’s basketball team as “Nappy-headed hoes.” If you want to skip past the lyrics, I don’t blame you. But, for those who want to hear what passes for music – at least to CBS executives – please feel free to read on:

The words of Three 6-Mafia:
Yeah, run bitch. Run hoe! Ya nice motherfuckas!
Y'all jealous ass bitches!
You know what I'ma call y'all? Some Jello niggas.
Cuz y'all jealous of us, bitch.
Every motherfucker in our camp ridin clean, nigga.
Y'all know the motherfuckin score.
And this one right here is dedicated to you [censor beep].
It's dedicated to you, nigga.

More from Three Six Mafia:
Well all them hoes that used to be down with me
I signed a deal, made some money, now you bitches downin me?
Bitches tryin ta blast at me,
or am I dreamin the motherfuckers be after me?
Why you tryin ta be like me? You labelled as a wanna-be.
You ghetto hoes, you need to read a bonus Gangsta Boo
Cuz you might find a tip, bitch, that can help you.
I'm a down chick
Niggas be wantin ta crown chick
Stay around chick
Whenever, however, it's goin down, bitch.

Pearls from Lyfe Jennings:
Im from a place where them niggas dont talk a lot
License suspended so we walk a lot Always been a thug since i was a young cat
Breast fed by Godzilla mix my Similac with cognac whoa
Now i cant even pray no more
Cuz i done did so much dirt and smoked so much dro
Im afraid God will be like what you calling here for
Dont be tying my line up asking me for shit no more, whoa.

DMX at their best:
Song titled What These Bitches Want
Aiyyo!! Dog, I meet bitches, discrete bitches
Street bitches, slash, Cocoa Puff sweet bitches (WHAT?)
Make you wanna eat bitches, but not me
Y'all niggaz eat off the plate all you want but not D (UHH)
I fuck with these hoes from a distance
The instant they start to catch feelings
I start to stealin they shit
then I'm out just like a thief in the night
I sink my teeth in to bite
You thinkin life, I'm thinkin more like - whassup tonight?
Come on ma, you know I got a wife
and even though that pussy tight I'm not gon' jeapordize my life (aight?)

Now, back to something resembling normalcy by comparison. Over the years I have listened to Don Imus. He’s sometimes pretty funny, sometimes not. After a few years and several fruitless searches on my local radio dial for his show, I gave up on him. I never thought of him until the recent flap and predictable hypocrisy pushed him into the limelight.

It didn’t take long for those in the race trade to inject themselves into the middle of this show of bad taste, and the cameras followed. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, who each have uttered enough racial slurs to begin their own rap group, demanded Imus and any other white bigot pay a price; cash in a suitcase preferred. Sharpton even got Imus to make a trip to kiss his ring in the hope of absolution that wouldn’t come.

What has our sense of perspective in this country come to? CBS throws a fading radio talent under the bus in the name of racial sensitivity and then rakes in millions off the misogynistic rap artists it produces. Jackson and Sharpton have been working off the same tired script for years, setting themselves up as the racial arbiters of our time and yet don’t have an ounce of the moral authority to lead a congregation, little alone a nation.

These two men are the real whores in this story, doing anything to move their own agenda forward. It just so happens that their agenda is the same as their plantation owners, the democrats. The debate will surely shift to the coarseness of words on talk radio and it won't be long before the Fairness Doctrine will be invoked and a movement started to put an end to talk radio (or at least conservative talk radio). Words don't usually scare the average person, but it can scare a democrat if the words cost them an election. Sure, Imus is nominally a liberal, but he can be sacrificed if he serves a larger purpose.

Rather than helping salve the wounds of racial tension, the hypocrisy and hidden agenda are so overwhelming and obvious that it will have the opposite effect. And that will end up being the sad ending of this story.

Quiet Birthdays

Today was The Boy's 25th birthday; a quarter century milestone. We had a fairly quiet evening with just family and The Ber and her mom, and it made me think about the fact that it won't be long before these kinds of celebrations fade away.

During the kids' younger years, the birthdays were celebrated like national holidays and Christmas all rolled into one. The gifts were almost entirely toys or whatever fad they were into at the moment and for reasons I will never be happy about, some assembly was always required. Then comes the electronic birthdays in which everything needs an outlet followed by the years when it was okay to buy clothes providing it was the right kind of clothes -- a tricky bit of shopping required.

Now we're just happy to be part of the celebration of their birthdays and even though we will always celebrate this day and November 9, it may be as secondary revelers as they go about building their own families. It's natural and normal for them to go from birthday hats and horns to quiet nights, but it does serve as a reminder that they are growing up and there isn't a damn thing we can do about it.