Thursday, April 19, 2007

THE CHO VIDEOS


Airing the videos was an appallingly bad decision by NBC. The endless re-broadcast of them by every other news outlet served only to compound the offensive nature of the videos and sound bites. Do the parents of murdered young people really need to see the cause of their crushing grief given this kind of attention? If I found it offensive, what must they be feeling?

That Seung-Hui Cho was a mentally disturbed young man is obvious. There were numerous indications that all was not well with this young man. Seung-Hui Cho was judged "mentally ill" and a possible "danger to self or others," according to a court order that led to a brief hospitalization in late 2005. That is not to say that he had no responsibility for his heinous behavior because in my view he is wholly responsible. While he may have been mentally disturbed, he was capable of organized and meticulous planning as demonstrated by everything he did in the days leading up to April 16th and on that horrendous day. His actions leading up to that day showed that he knew what he was doing, he knew that it was illegal and he went ahead and did it anyway.

There had been numerous complaints about his behavior from other residents of his dorm and even from one of his professors who insisted that he be removed from her class due to his unwillingness to conform in any way to the basic rules of classroom behavior. His offensive behavior included using his camera phone to photograph the legs of the female students in the French class and refusing to follow any directives of Nikki Giovanni, the teacher. When the female students in that class insisted that they attend via remote rather than in person, Ms. Giovanni went to her supervisor and demanded that Cho be removed from her class, which he was. Why was nothing done at THAT point? In addition, there was the classroom fire and the arrests due to his stalking of several other female students.

The production of the various videos and sound bites was an act of pure self-aggrandizement and this murderous oaf should not be receiving the benefit of 24/7 replays of his ravings. Moreover, the saturation of the air waves with the insanity of this one, narcissistic thug can only encourage others who seek to garner attention through antisocial and murderous behavior to emulate Cho’s rampage.

I have some questions. Cho ranted on and on about rich kids. Yet, he apparently had sufficient funds to make his warped and despicable dreams come to fruition. Apparently his parents had a thriving business, so what was his bitch about really? That they weren’t Donald-Trump-rich? Or was this just whining crap coming out of the mouth of a monster? And speaking of Cho’s parents, how did they not know that they were raising an aberration in human form? How is it that, despite the troubles he had created for himself at VT, they permitted him to continue to go to school there? It's for damned sure that he wasn't paying his tuition himself, after all.

Finally, I wonder how the babbling bloviators of the left can continue to prattle on about guns being the problem. Virginia Tech was proudly proclaimed a Hand Gun Free Zone. Did Cho not get the memo? My civil rights are not abrogated in any way simply by virtue of my enrollment in an institute of higher learning. And given the dangers attendant upon said enrollment - I'm packing!


UPDATE: NBC said the material was aired because it helped to answer the question of why Cho killed 32 people and himself on the Virginia Tech campus Monday. And they stated that they were scaling way back on the showings of the video.

Right, sure, NBC - ratings had nothing whatsoever to do with it and you are scaling back because by now, everyone's got it so there's no advantage!!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

And absolutely no thought given to the hundreds of family members grieving their loss. What a sad, but also dispicable decision NBC made.

Good post GM

/s/ the other GM

Gayle Miller said...

Thanks, GM!