It won't be so vicarious if some new draconian limit on firearms is enacted at the federal level by those politicians who specialize in capitalizing on tragedy.
You’re right she has a point. What ever happened to ‘chin up’ and let’s press on. Sheeesh, we’re turning into a nation of sheep cowering before the wolves.
Nice to see some clear-headed common sense about the grief industry. Being rational can indeed be fun.
FINALLY someone says what I have been thinking for a long time...
ANY tragedy creates a rush for people to be part of it... they have to go buy flowers for..um... some people over there.. so they can feel thay have ‘done something’
like poverty pimps playing on poor people for their own benefit, news organizations are tragedy whores.
She just couldn’t help but bash Bush and call for gun regulation at the end, could she? But other then that, it’s an excellent article.
“Count me out. There’s something fraudulent about this eagerness to latch onto the grief of others and embrace the idea that we, too, have been victimized. This trivializes the pain felt by those who have actually lost something and pathologizes normal reactions to tragedy. Empathy is good, but feeling shocked and saddened by the shootings doesn’t make us traumatized or special — these feelings make us normal.”
Couldn’t agree more with this statement. Its a horrible tragedy, no disputing it.
That said, I’m having a very good week personally, and the VT attack doesn’t change it.
We have become the United States of Victimhood.
The shootings were tragic.
But innocent Iraqis have a Virginia Tech incident daily.
I will say a quick prayer today at noontime for the dead and the families.
Then I will turn back to work and get on with it.
Media/self induced collateral victims. Remember PEST (Post Election Stress Trauma)? I’m surprised the drug companies haven’t made a pill for my malady...EGADS (Egregious General Anxiety Disorder Syndrome). /sarcasm
Everybody needs therapy...what are we metrosexual cavemen? Considering how the counseling industry repeatedly fails as the VT incident again shows us, I’m not sure why people think counseling does any good. But enough about that, let’s talk about me? Oooooh it feels so good, so just do it. ;-)
VPI '67
Bearing in mind... the campus community is a little rattled anyway, wondering if it could happen here (yep, and there's nothing we can do about it). Furthermore, many people have good friends who were at Virgina Tech.
Absolutely, worth repeating.
And quite frankly, all these "vigils" (not just for VT) are worthless. Libs are great at them... crawl out, show "support", crawl back.
jw
Actually, quite a few people from the DC area do attend VT and many alumni are in the Post's circulation area, so I don't fault the Post for doing this.
It won't be so vicarious if some new draconian limit on firearms is enacted at the federal level by those politicians who specialize in capitalizing on tragedy.
“Count me out. There’s something fraudulent about this eagerness to latch onto the grief of others and embrace the idea that we, too, have been victimized”
This is so true.
People will quickly go back to their lives. Every now and then they will pause and reflect on the tragedy, but it won’t really change how they go about everyday business.
The parents of the dead don’t have this luxury.
Right now they are holding on for dear life and wondering how they’re going to make through the next hour.
They don’t want to consider a world without their child in it.
They don’t want to live their life without this beam of light on it.
There is no getting back to “normal” for them.
Eventually they will establish a new “normal” where they learn to function alongside their grief, but that process can take month, even years.
No...we are not all “Hokies”.
The Virginia Tech massacre was catastrophic for the victims and their loved ones, but, unlike war, it was not catastrophic for the nation. Yet President Bush — who refuses to attend the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq because that might "politicize" the war his administration started — ordered all federal flags at half-staff and rushed to Blacksburg to bemoan the "day of sadness for the entire nation." It's a good strategy.
From her bio:
Rosa Brooks is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times and a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center. (She is currently on leave from Georgetown to serve as Special Counsel at the Open Society Institute in New York).
From 2001-2006, she was an associate professor at the University of Virginia School of Law. Before that, Brooks was a senior advisor at the US Department of State’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, a consultant for the Open Society Institute and Human Rights Watch, a fellow at the Carr Center at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, a board member of Amnesty International USA, and a lecturer at Yale Law School. She is a member of the Executive Council of the American Society of International Law and the Policy Committee of the National Security Network. Her government and NGO work has involved field research on issues ranging from transitional justice in Iraq, Indonesia and Kosovo to child soldiers in Uganda and Sierra Leone.
In addition to her popular writing, Brooks has written numerous scholarly articles on international law, failed states, post-conflict reconstruction and the rule of law, human rights, terrorism and the law of war. Her book, “Can Might Make Rights? The Rule of Law After Military Interventions” (with Jane Stromseth and David Wippman) was published in 2006 by Cambridge University Press.
Brooks received her A.B. from Harvard in 1991 (history and literature), followed by a master’s degree from Oxford in 1993 (social anthropology) and a law degree from Yale in 1996.
Personally, I’m sick of people turning every street corner where a relative was killed into some sort of miniature cemetery by leaving behind flowers, teddy bears, etc. This country has become a nation of wallowers in grief.
I ain't no damn Columbine, I've never been there. I ain't no Hokie either.
What I am is sick of this stupid-ass tinkly piano music that EVERY news outlet is using to show how emotional they all are, when you know behind the scenes they've been jumping for joy over this.
(/rant)
32 people were murdered at VT the other day. Since that day approx. 431 people have died in automobile accidents, 158 of them killed by drunk drivers, which in many cases is akin to murder. Is the grief of those families latched on to by the nation as a whole? Is that grief any less severe?