Watch NBScBSABCPBSCNNTTNandalltherest turn them into a mini series...
This guy was a Senior and his major was English???? How did someone who writes like a 5th grader make it all the way through college, especially if his degree was in English? Wonder what grade he made on these plays?
Maybe he was trying to impress the AX Committee?
http://www.axawards.com/axacommittee/index.html
“About the AX Committee
The Asian Excellence Awards Committee is an elite group from a wide range of industries, including the arts and entertainment community, the business community, and prominent figures, who epitomize and have been instrumental in raising the profile and awareness of Asians in the arts and across the industries of film, TV, sports, theater, live performance and popular culture.
Each member of this peer group has achieved positions of leadership in the U.S. and the world in a broad range of professions. With their diverse backgrounds, members collectively pool their strengths and experience to highlight the achievements and talents of Asian Americans.”
You can bet that some of the ultra lib theater geeks in NYC and San Fran will be performing these for the shock value.
Why won’t they release the note?
I was surprised at how laughably sophmoric this ‘play’ was. Freeper Bulldogger and I were in the same writing workshops in Undergrad, and I can’t think we ever encountered anything this bad and juvenile. But then, we were in college 20 years ago.
I do not teach English, but I cannot imagine a student turning in work like this. It is literally a cry for help. Most students try to sugarcoat their writing for professors. They tend to write what they think the professor will like. Usually, you have to push them to take risks. In this case, the student went way off the map, and I can see why his teacher was concerned.
There isn't anything here that tells me the student is a psycho-killer. But taken together with other things, such as his manner and aloneness, it looks like a red flag after the fact. The trouble is, there are probably hundreds of gore-fest scripts getting written on college campuses, and no one actually gets hurt by them.
Once again, we all have to obsess over the pathetic life of a total loser all because the Virginia Legislature, with the strong backing of the Virginia Chiefs of Police disarmed the students and faculty of Virginia Tech.
His view of how other people live their lives is very twisted and bizarre.
I wonder what his family life was like. I haven’t heard of any statements from his family. It must not have been a very “healthy” situation. Of course, that’s just speculation on my part. Sometimes the apple falls far from the tree despite the parents’ best intentions.
“The play’s the thing, wherein I’ll catch the conscience of...”
A futile exercise for Hamlet, and for those who’d identify mass murderers.
From an ABC report:
http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=3048108&page=1
Lucinda Roy, a co-director of the creative writing program at Virginia Tech, taught Cho in a poetry class in fall of 2005 and later worked with him one-on-one after she became concerned about his behavior and themes in his writings.
Roy spoke outside her home Tuesday afternoon, saying that there was nothing explicit in Cho’s writings, but that threats were there under the surface.
Roy told ABC News that Cho seemed “extraordinarily lonely—the loneliest person I have ever met in my life.” She said he wore sunglasses indoors, with a cap pulled low over his eyes. He whispered, took 20 seconds to answer questions, and took cellphone pictures of her in class. Roy said she was concerned for her safety when she met with him.
She said she notified authorities about Cho, but said she was told that there would be too many legal hurdles to intervene. She said she asked him to go to counseling, but he never did.
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I wonder if he was evaluated for some variety of “high functioning autism” such as, for example,
http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/asperger/asperger.htm
http://www.med.yale.edu/chldstdy/autism/aspergers.html
since his reported behavior (before the shootings) at least suggests this as a possibility.
From the conclusion of:
http://www.autism.org/asperger.html
“Researchers feel that Asperger’s syndrome is probably hereditary in nature because many families report having an ‘odd’ relative or two. In addition, depression and bipolar disorder are often reported in those with Asperger’s syndrome as well as in family members.
“At this time, there is no prescribed treatment regimen for individuals with Asperger’s syndrome. In adulthood, many lead productive lives, living independently, working effectively at a job (many are college professors, computer programmers, dentists), and raising a family.
“Sometimes people assume everyone who has autism and is high-functioning has Asperger’s syndrome. However, it appears that there are several forms of high-functioning autism, and Asperger’s syndrome is one form.”
Hollywood will make them into movies.
Mark my words.
For what it’s worth: I think this guy listened to too much rap music, watched too many raunchy tv shows.
In “Richard McBeef”, John, the son, was the heavy - Richard, the stepfather, was okay. I could understand why John behaved the way he did with a mother like Sue! She fought his battles for him, and refused to discipline him. Cho did not honor the woman. She was certainly no roll model!
I think Cho used his writing to express his hostility, if not hatred, of his school mates, and Americans in general. To Cho they were all infidels.
In “Mr. Brownstone”, I think he had watched James Earl Jone’s play which involved a lottery ticket, with a similar ending.
I haven’t listened to rap music, but I understand it is wrought with four letter words and disgusting scenarios. You can’t watch tv for five minutes before a steamy bedroom scene pops up. To a muslim, if he was muslim, all these things would easily set him off.
I am not making excuses for the terrible thing Cho did. I am just saying I am still inclined to think that what he did - he did for “Allah”, and the bullet in the face was his suicide ticket to paradise. (After all, he had no bomb. He had no airplane.)
I do think it very odd and disturbing that an Imam prayed to Allah at the memorial, but the Son of God was never mentioned by the Lutheran minister.
This case has nothing to do with gun control or lack thereof, and everything to do with the ADA and the other PC laws that have veloved in our country related to mental illness. This kid’s professors were alarmed, and reported him to deans, campus police, and campus counseling service. One professor tutored him privately a few times, apparently at the suggestion of an academic, who offered this as an alternative to dropping him from the class. This prof (Lucinda Roy) was sufficiently scared of him that she arranged a code with her secretary, that if she called the secretary on the phone and mentioned a dead professor’s name that meant it was time to call security.
From an NYT article http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/18/us/18virginia.html?hp
“Lucinda Roy, an English professor, said Mr. Cho’s writing, laced with anger, profanity and violence, concerned several faculty members. In 2005, she sent examples to the campus police, the campus counseling service and other officials. All were worried, but little could be done, she said.
Ms. Roy said she would offer to go with Mr. Cho to counseling, just to talk. “But he wouldn’t say yes, and unfortunately I couldn’t force him to do it,” she said. Students were also alarmed that Mr. Cho was taking inappropriate pictures of women under desks, she said.”
What the hell is wrong with the laws in this country that nobody can force this obviously psychopathic kid into a psychiatric exam, and get him locked up in a secure hospital where he belonged? HE was left in charge of deciding what to do about the demons in his sick mind, even though it was obvious to many, many people in positions of authority at the college where he was a student, that he was not equipped to handle himself. But we’re all told over and over again that “mental illness is just like any other illness” and it’s subject to all the excessive privacy laws and to all the excessive protections of the ADA. And any school official who tried to force him to see a counselor or psychiatrist, or who tried to expel him from the school, would get sued and end up paying this kid a bundle.
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I'm not a big fan of Alan Colmbs but his radio show tonight on the subject was good. He took it into a different direction, an introspective humans. Colmbs is good on these sort of issues no matter what you think of his politics.
Sorry for the ramble. Guess the weight of all this is sinking in now.
I imagine “McBeef” is being shopped around Hollywood as I type.