Category: Virginia Tech

Roger’s Problem Is That He Has No Opinions


Hope you can read the item above about the cause of global warming.
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I was sad to read that writer David Halberstam had died. Probably the only book of his I ever read in toto was 1972’s The Best and the Brightest, but it so informed me about VietNam that it was pivotal in my understanding of “wisdom” run amok. I’ve read large sections of The Powers That Be (1979), one thick book. But I have read, and enjoyed the essays on sports, which may have been excerpted from his many sports books, such as The Breaks of the Game, The Amateurs, and especially Summer of ’49, about the Red Sox-Yankee rivalry. Halberstam died in a car accident on the way to see Yelberton Abraham Tittle, the former New York Giants’ quarterback, for a book about “The Game”; a decade before the Super Bowl, the 1958 Colts-Giants Championship Game helped to “make” the NFL.
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Most of the pieces about Boris Yeltsin were about his mixed legacy: “Russians pay respects to flawed hero Yeltsin”: Tributes to Yeltsin praised him for taking on and defeating the Soviet establishment, but also noted his shortcomings during his eight years as president – economic turmoil, a disastrous war against rebels in Chechnya and his drink-fuelled gaffes.” Somehow reminded me of an American President, Richard Nixon.
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I was interested in personal international reactions to the Virginia Tech shootings. Here’s one from an expatriate in New Zealand, and, at my request, one from Great Britain/ Someone domestic noted, in response to a comment I made: “People see an Iraq bombing and think, ‘Gee that’s sad, but not unexpected.’ People expect bombing and mayhem in a war zone” but not on a peaceful college campus. OK, sure. But those lives lost are no less horrific to me because they’re “expected”. (And I suspect those families in Iraq are just as horrified by the loss of their loved ones, and don’t think it’s “sad, but expected.”)
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I first heard about the Ken Burns’ exclusion of Hispanics in his upcoming WWII documentary from history professor GayProf. Since then, the situation has been rectified, with Burns’ support. While hailed as a victory in some circles, I’ve also read a lot of that “affirmative action/political correctness run amok” rhetoric. I was most struck by this particular passage in GP’s piece: “This time, Burns set out to chart the little-discussed Second World War. How often have I said, ‘If only somebody would stop and think about that forgotten war!'” In setting himself to be the end-all and be-all on this oft-mined area, I think Burns had a greater responsibly to paint the broadest tableau possible. Off topic: GP, what do you think about this article Commentary: The hypocrisy of repeating the ‘w-word’?
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Here’s an editorial about Kitty Carlisle Hart, more than a panelist on a game show, but New York State’s grand doyenne of theatre.
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And yet I have nothing pithy to say about the passing of music legend Don Ho?

ROG

ROG

A Mental Mistake

I made a tactical error this week: I watched, and read far too much about Virginia Tech. There were two episodes of My Name Is Earl listed on my DVR Monday night; it was really Dateline NBC. That Boston Legal on Tuesday? ABC Primetime. Yeah, I COULD have just deleted them, but no, I kept watching. At least I’ve missed, so far, the controversial airing of some of the material sent to NBC by the killer. Yet I was coming to a conclusion not dissimilar to this one. Which is to say, I do feel for the VT community, and the country as a whole, but I’m struck by how one bomb in Baghdad might well kill two or three dozen people. I wonder if we – I – have become inured because it happens so damn often there.

The shock of VT will subside when the NEXT thing happens – was the Don Imus thing only last week? – only to be brought back in the spotlight by the inevitable lawsuit by some of the families of the last 30 victims. (Meanwhile, whether to lock up the guns or for everyone to be packin’ heat is addressed well here.

But the BIGGEST mistake I made this week was going here where one can find the full text of a couple of Cho Seung-Hui’s plays. Oddly, it wasn’t the plays I found most disturbing, it was the banal dialogue of people. Nasty sniping at each other. “Someone should have turned him in, gotten him therapy” (in fact, they did). Well, you can read it if you want. For some reason, the movie Minority Report came to mind, even though I’ve never seen it.

Anyway, here’s one comment. Please tell me what you think, if you will:

This guy’s sick for sure. But he’s sick because he killed 30+ people. He’s not sick because he wrote weird plays.

As a writer, I find it offensive that so many people say this kid should have been turned into counselors, authorities, school officials, etc. because of something he wrote. Do we really want a society where we judge the content of someone’s character based on a creative piece he or she wrote? If your answer is yes, then think of all the books we would have to burn. Think of the great works of the past that we would never read. Forget about Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” “Macbeth,” or almost anything else by Shakespeare. Forget about Henry James’ “Turn of the Screw.” We couldn’t read “Fahrenheit 451” even though we’d be living in a society sort of like the society in “Fahrenheit 451.” And Stephen King? Are you kidding? He’s as sick as this guy, if we’re judging people based on creative works. The school officials are not to blame. The students are not to blame. The local law enforcement officials are not to blame. This could have happened anywhere, on any campus, in any dorm. That’s what makes it so tragic.

I was intrigued, however, how the local media lucked into “the local angle” as poet Nikki Giovanni, who I used to read 20 years ago, taught Cho a couple years ago, but booted him out of class. She spoke at an already scheduled lecture at the University at Albany on Thursday.
ROG

ROG
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