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18 Apr 2007 0845H
His name was Cho Seung Hui. No wait. Seung Hui Cho. Oh, bother . . .
I’m tired of hearing about VT. Rather than compassion fatigue, I’d rather call it media bombardment shock. Observations on what the media are telling us:
- Too much emphasis on the killer’s foreignness, on his immigrant status, on his unassimilated name. Dude. The guy grew up in a suburb of DC. How foreign could he be? Yo Yo Ma isn’t a foreigner. . . .
- Dating myself here, but few people will remember Wayne Lo, who traipsed into his trial for a 1992 campus mass shooting wearing a Sick of It All sweatshirt.
- He was alienated from his rich classmates. That’s worth looking into. It’s not a prime factor, but probably a contributor. I think class figures somehow into these kinds of killings: Columbine (median household income $75,800), Wilmette ($106,773), Overland Park ($64,804), Centerville ($83,100). I’m also not quick to dismiss race as a factor of alienation in a suburb like Centreville, VA where 18% of the population is Asian American, several times more so than Latinos or African Americans, to Blacksburg (7.2% AAPI). But it’s worth scrutiny.
- He was angry at families, perhaps his family, and those who he perceived had power over him. I thought his play was an intriguing satire upon the hypocrisy, the overbearing expectations, and the slow accumulation of lies, half-truths, and prevarications within the family. Of course, in Act III, it all breaks down but it had a good premise.
- Like Brett Easton Ellis isn’t disturbing? Like Chuck Palahniuk isn’t disturbing?
- Do you think his Type-A parents, like all good Type-A Asian American parents, are berating him, even in death, for not being good enough, for “only” killing 33, and demanding why didn’t he kill more?
- It’s funny how no one from the Asian American community is stepping forward to demand more Asian American student services to deal with what is, by all the evidence we have in the literature, a crisis in Asian American mental health care. The lives you save may be your own.
- How long before we have a slew of theory-based papers at AAAS on Cho Studies?
- All you have to do is kill 33 people in this country at once, and you suddenly become the most infamous Asian American in history, while burying news stories about the deadliest days in Iraq and the Supreme Court’s decision on late term abortions?
I’m moving to Canada.
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