Media Flaws

There I was shooting the breeze in some unplanned beerhall forum, in Gugs, and as you guessed it the topic was not quite stolid – although I’ll admit it was thought provoking and quite polemical, to say the least, but I was quite non-responsive. I guess it’s in my phlegmatic nature not to precociously challenge the often-garrulous gents that frequent beerhalls. I let them have it – this time it was Cho, the South Korean who literally dug hell in Virgina Tech’s soil.

Cho, possibly a byblow of some unplanned romantic late night session which led to a lack of parental love and extensive child abuse, was a victim of his own doing (and possibly Quentin Tarantino's ideal dream), or so we would like to believe, but I somehow always attribute violence in men to some overspill of something else. And so the unstable element radically broke out of Virginia Tech’s nucleus in the midst of unsuspecting neutrinos. Strange how many are now radically breaking out, stating that the excrescences of violence in Cho were vividly symptomatic, but were ignored.

Having watched Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine, I’ve always been convinced that every third store in the U.S sells ammunition and that every American family owns a machine gun. This was further reinforced in my student days when I worked for an online gambling site set up for bored U.S citizens – I handled their queries/problems (to put it midly) on the phone. You’d be amazed at how many times they threatened to personally fly to Africa and shoot me out of whichever bush I was sitting under. At times it got so bad, I even struggled to phantom such anger over the phone. You think they’re violent? You bet.

Which then brings me to the tragic irony, if not pathetic irony, that the U.S faces – Guns galore. I doubt many U.S citizens would qualify for guns in South Africa, not just because gun stores are as scarce as a chicken’s teeth, but the stringent assessments we carry out this side, would render them gun-less for life.

Moving away from violence, I’m sure the Muslim community that side is breathing heavy sighs of relief “thank goodness he’s not one of us”. But alas, knowing Bush, he’s probably contemplating the unthinkable on behalf of his citizens. Don’t be surprised if claims of nuclear ammunition in South Korea start surfacing.

Now I feel sorry for South Koreans that side. In my sorry state I feel further sorry for the media’s handling of this uncommon, fast-becoming common occurrence. As usual the media has disgracefully exalted Cho – to a point where I’m still in the foggiest mist of cluelessness when it comes to naming any of his victims; all I know is that there were 32. They’re just numbers. But Cho has fast become an icon of sorts. Say that name backwards in my sleep and I’ll tell you his Pulp Fictionous life story, what he didn’t eat for breakfast, I’ll even tell you he had a 9mm Glock pistol and .22 Walter semi-automatic. But I’d dismally fail to even tell you what one of his victims was wearing or who the professor he shot was.

Whew, so that was the conversation I was having in my head, but I couldn’t deny the fast-becoming boisterous raconteurs the pleasure of murdering the Cho topic, especially knowing that I could later voice my point of view here.