Something has been nagging at me for the past week, ever since that tragic shooting in a fitness class in Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh. It seems that for the most part, the story was reported by the news, a few snippets here and there have emerged about the shooter, but other than that there seems to be radio silence in response to the event. Where is the outrage that usually accompanies this sort of thing? Why is no one shouting their solidarity with the women who were horrifically victimized by this criminal, as we did during the Virginia Tech shootings? Why does it seem that no one is truly disturbed by the actions of this man?
Not to long ago a famous incident occurred in which music icon Rhianna was brutalized by her then boyfriend Chris Brown. The response to that occurrence seemed to have been "Well, what did she do to provoke him?" or whatever.
Jump ahead to: Old-what's-his-name decides to take an automatic weapon into a room full of women, shuts off the lights, and starts shooting, killing four and wounding many. One of which happened to be an ex-girlfriend. It has since been found out that he planned this for quite some time, even chickening out at one point, to the extent that he felt that women in general owed him the time of day because he was a "nice enough guy" and he was "clean cut and wore a touch of cologne". (Paraphrased quotes). One could conclude that if some one had expressed an interest in him to the extent that he was seeking that this would not have happened. By that conclusion one could deduce that somehow it was the women's fault. So what did the ex do to provoke this kind of response? I'll tell you what:
Nothing. Period.
The reason this happened is because one man made a choice. That choice had nothing to do with anyone else's actions or lack there of. Chris Brown made a choice. That choice had nothing to do with Rhianna's actions or lack there of.
Are we afraid to align ourselves with the victims of this shooting? Or is the hidden truth that we fell into the trap of thinking that certain things are owed to us if we do our part? Are we afraid to examine the motives and thoughts of this mass murderer lest we find something similar to our own?
The news of the shooting is disturbing. The shooting reflects the motives of one man, but the media silence reflects the possible motives of an entire society, and that is what I find truly disturbing.
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3 comments:
Actually, the PA shooter had no connection whatsoever to any of his victims. Sodini hadn't had a girlfriend since 1984. It was merely assumed that there was an ex-girlfriend in the class, just as it was initially assumed that the V-tech shooting was a domestic dispute just because his first victim happened to be female.
Apparently this guy attended some kind of seminar for pick-up artists trying to meet youger women: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090807/ap_on_re_us/us_health_club_shooting
Oh wow. That makes it even worse that it was just assumed that one of the women was an ex.
I did see that about the seminar. In fact I even saw an interview with one of the pretty female models that was hired to help coach the men at the seminar, and she kept talking about how 'sexy' he was, as in..."He was really sexy. I guess you just never know..." Really, disturbing, imo.
I doubt there's any grand plot of gender biased news suppression going on here. My guess, rather, is that this story is merely an unfortunate competitor for other news happening in our country right now, like the economy, or the screaming matches happening at town hall meetings, various forms of corruption, and the ever-important cash for clunkers deal, etc.
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