Posted on 04/20/2007 11:58:48 AM PDT by Jeff Chandler
We are Virginia Tech
We are sad today We will be sad for quite a while We are not moving on We are embracing our mourning
We are Virginia Tech
We are strong enough to stand tall tearlessly We are brave enough to bend to cry And we are sad enough to know that we must laugh again
We are Virginia Tech
We do not understand this tragedy We know we did nothing to deserve it
But neither does a child in Africa Dying of AIDS
Neither do the Invisible Children Walking the night away to avoid being captured by a rogue army
Neither does the baby elephant watching his community Be devastated for ivory Neither does the Mexican child looking For fresh water
Neither does the Iraqi teenager dodging bombs
Neither does the Appalachian infant killed By a boulder Dislodged Because the land was destabilized
No one deserves a tragedy
We are Virginia Tech The Hokie Nation embraces Our own And reaches out With open heart and mind To those who offer their hearts and hands
We are strong And brave And innocent And unafraid
We are better than we think And not yet quite what we want to be
We are alive to imagination And open to possibility We will continue To invent the future
Through our blood and tears Through all this sadness
We are the Hokies
We will prevail We will prevail We will prevail
We are Virginia Tech
Nikki Giovanni, delivered at the Convocation, April 17, 2007
Sounds like one disturbed individual...
Well, you just knew it would come to something like this.
Would be great to see this covered in the show.
Cho repeated a lot of themes from the above article in his diatribe.
All taken from the English dept at VT.
Rush was right!
The lesson of Virginia Tech-LIBERALISM KILLS
A chip right off the Maya Angelou block.
I understand how upset Ms. Giovanni must have been earlier this week. I understand her sincerity and grief. I said prayers at noontime today as well.
But her poetry or prose is drivel.
Additional ‘art’ from the VT English dept
I wonder if Cho took the senior seminar by Professor Knapp, on “The self-justifying criminal in literature.” Because he certainly learned to be a self-justifying criminal. Or whether he sat in courses with Nikki Giovanni, using her famous self-glorifying book, “The Prosaic Soul of Nikki Giovanni (2003)”. Maybe he read Professor Bernice Hausman’s “Changing Sex: Transsexualism, technology, and the idea of gender” -— just the thing for a disoriented young male suffering from massive culture shock on the hypersexual American campus. And even more gender-bending from Professor Paul Heilker, who wrote “Textual Androgyny, the Rhetoric of the Essay, and the Politics of Identity in Composition (or The Struggle to Be a Girly-Man in a World of Gladiator Pumpitude).” Or the Lesbian love stories of Professor Matthew Vollmer. Yup, that’s just what this student needs. These trophee “art works” are all advertised on the English Department faculty websites.
Or maybe Cho was assigned Professor Lisa Norris’ prize-winning book, Toy Guns, featured on her web site. The book reviewers wrote
“All ten stories in this disturbing collection revolve around Americans’ passionate devotion to guns, gun-toting, sexually-tinged violence, and the womanly pursuit of power and dignity.” [....]
“In each wrenching story, we see an America out of control, in love with war....”
I don’t know any Americans who are in love with war, but that is the picture Cho got from his teachers. Having spent the last 14 years as a resident alien in the school system, he could know nothing else.
And then there is the big Marxist website from Professor Brizee, all in fiery red against pitch black, showing old, mass-murder-inspiring Karl flanked by two raised fists. It celebrates revolutionary violence and hate for capitalist America (which is paying for Cho’s education). “Critical Social Theory” -— the euphemism for PoMo (Post Modern) Marxism -— is a big part of English teaching at VT. The Marxist page links prominently to the British Socialist Worker’s Party, which is currently leading the charge for Islamic fascism through such creatures as George Galloway.
And, talking about Islamist ideas, there is Professor Carter-Tod, who wrote a report about “ “Treatment of Arab American, Muslums and Seiks (sic) Post 911,” for the US Civil Rights Commission. The racial grievance industry is alive and growing at VT.
Huh? Is there a babies-crushed-by-boulders-because-of-greedy-miners epidemic I didn't hear about?
Maybe she should find herself at the bottom of a landslide of Prozac.
That was delivered at the memorial by one of the university's speakers. I don't recall if she's a professor or a dean but this was not written by Cho.
Thanks for posting this. Other than speculation on Rush’s show, I have not seen this stuff covered on cable or talk radio.
Standard University English Department rhetoric. It’s supposed to sound like something with substance. Or maybe like poetry. And if you question it’s validity or relevance, you are a Philistine.
That’s why my kids have degrees in the hard sciences. Even at 18, they could see the crap in this writing.
Nikki Giovanni is a well-known black poet. She is a bit out there to say the least, but then so is Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou at times - Giovanni is ALWAYS out there though, way out in left field.
I found that one interesting too.
perhaps Dan Rather reported it some time ago......??
Sounds pretty “Hokie” to me...
What Cho learned was to be sure and pick a “gun free zone” to commit your slaughter, you can’t get bigger bodycounts at those places.
I recognized the piece from the memorial, before I turned it off.
The poem may suck, but she did a damn fine job that day.
It takes a lot, but
hearing that, I'd rather hear
NBC's Cho tapes . . .
“it brought down the house and helped turn shock and horror into unity and pride.”
“Unity and Pride” for what? For “the cause”?
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