Virginia Tech: The Next Big Story

The shooting on the Virginia Tech campus earlier this week left 32 people dead and thousands of others mentally scarred for many more years to come. In the wake of all this there are probably two people in the world who are feeling less pressure and that would be Don Imus and Sanjaya Malakar. What do I mean by that? I don't mean that they are happy with the tragic events at Tech but rather, they are no longer in the media spotlight as they had been just prior to Monday. As soon as Cho Seung-Hui opened fire on defenseless students on campus on Monday, the focus of the media shifted from these two onto the story of the moment and once again the media, both liberal and conservative, have seen fit to bombard us with constant images of what's happening in Virginia Tech. While I agree that it is news and that we should gain as much insight into the incident to help prevent such a tragedy from happening again, the stance that the media often takes in cases like this is enough to drive anyone insane.

At the gym and on any news channel you were likely to tune into in the DC Metro area and across the country, the only story was Virginia Tech. Suddenly anything and everything connected to the shooting was fair game and the media seems Hell-bent on flooding us with a dearth of knowledge, something more than many of us want. From out of the woodwork come the interviews with family and friends of those who were murdered in cold blood and those who knew the shooter. They throw around words like "obviously" and "clearly" about the killer as if now that they know who it was, there was no doubt about what Cho had always intended to do. He was a disturbed person and although there were signs that he may have had fatalistic plans in his future as highlighted in the various class ramblings and writings he produced, there was very little that was within the powers of the university or police.

People write crazy things all the time; don't believe me? Look up some of the things on the internet and you'll see that it's true. From what the media tells us, it puts a spin on the incident to make it appear that the problem was long known and ignored or that it was just not a priority for those in charge. They'll try to find out every shred of evidence that they can to figure out why this person did what he did. Outside the high school Cho attended several years back, news trucks and media are parked all over the place wanting to film news stories from the place where the killer apparently went to high school. "Is this where killers are made?" they seem to be asking us to consider. They'll talk to teachers and then play for us momentary sound bites that will play into what they want us to hear which is that Cho always has been a person with a killer mindset.

The media and others will use this tragedy for their own devices. Already Governor Tim Kaine responded to media reports that his opponents plan on using this to show that Kaine's stance on gun control issues is to blame and that had the rules been different under candidate X then the world would be safer and that the shooting never would have occured. Vultures. There's no other word to describe political campaign planners who use events such as this as means to push their candidate to the forefront. Thankfully the Cho was a South Korean immigrant; had he been from North Korea I'm sure there would have been calls stating that this was a terrorist plot by the North Koreans. Within 48 hours of the shooting we already have people second-guessing one another as if it's going to make a difference. In the wake of the shooting in Columbine there were calls to take assault weapons out of the market again. What happened? The assault weapons ban which had been in effect was allowed to expire. Why? Because we as a people have a very short attention span.

Show us a tragedy and we, fed by media and politicians, call for immediate action. Rhetoric is spouted and everyone seems to be on the course for change and then we all come to a stop in our tracks and want to keep things status quo. Then you get gun nuts who argue that just because some "clearly" disturbed kid bought a gun legally and shot 32 people in cold blood doesn't mean that I should lose the right to own and use a massive machine gun to protect my home and for when I go hunting. The call for legislation is only one of the knee-jerk reactions that seems to come from events such as these. The others are calls for figuring out what led to this crisis.

People point to video games saying they desensitize us and make us immune to the effects of violence and suffering. Others say that the music and movie industry are to blame for glamorizing violence in their lyrics and depictions. Psychologists come on television and radio and begin talking about how it's all the fault of the parents or the sibling or some other reason. Anything. As long as it is a reason for feeding the flames and keeping the stories going. Blaming things like video games and music is ridiculous simply because that is one facet of what is leading to incidents like this. It's all a matter of interpretation. Some blame Goth music or heavy metal or rap. The lyrics may not tell us explicitly that you should go and get a gun and kill 32 people but someone may interpret it that way. Forty years ago a guy named Charles Manson listened to the Beatles and decided that the lyrics were 'speaking to him' and inspired him to attempt to begin a race war in America while he and his followers hid in the desert of California. Now I don't know, but I don't think the Beatles popularity ended after that and I haven't heard anyone else come out and say that they should be banned because they have inflamatory lyrics.

The real tragedy of this whole thing is that Cho Seung-Hui probably will get more attention in the coming weeks than he may have ever received in his life. Had even half of this attention been focused on trying to understand why he was so withdrawn or what exactly was bothering him would have been more beneficial than simply pretending as if the case was clear but nothing could be done. The never ending coverage by the media will continue for weeks to come. The campus is closed for the rest of the week and so the crews will simply run images from the day of the shooting and the aftermath until they can move on to the next story which would be the continuing search to pin the blame and the eventual reopening of campus. It's a never-ending barrage of images and stories that will raise awareness but will not likely make any change simply because we don't want it. Politicians will use it for boosting campaign platforms and the media will use it to boost ratings. I myself will try to avoid a lot of it by reading the newspaper when I want and leaving the television tuned to something else. Let the families and friends of those lost grieve. Stop putting microphones in their faces and let them deal with the turmoil this week has brought and let them move on with their lives.