“Why not blame Hollywood movies here? Oh, we can never, ever go there...” [Rush] said, sarcastically.The "sarcastically" is helpful, because people who don't listen to the show really do have trouble understanding what Rush is trying to say... especially if they are anti-Rush, and the fact is that Rush loves to rope in his antagonists and laugh at the way they don't get him. Listeners — and I am one — are encouraged to think of ourselves as in-the-know insiders. We get it.
I don't think you have to be that smart to get it if you listen and hear the performance of the words, especially if you're on Rush's side, and this interplay between Rush lovers and haters creates energy that Rush endlessly recycles and amplifies. It's a very popular and high-profile show, and yet, listening, you feel included in a pretty friendly little circle. It's magic. A different kind of magic than movies, and so it's interesting to get the radio man's take on Hollywood.
But Politico moves on to something a WaPo columnist wrote and the reaction it got from 2 Hollywoodland critters:
“How many students watch outsized frat-boy fantasies like “Neighbors” and feel, as [suspect Elliot] Rodger did, unjustly shut out of college life that should be full of “sex and fun and pleasure”?” [Ann] Hornaday wrote over the weekend. “How many men, raised on a steady diet of Judd Apatow comedies in which the shlubby arrested adolescent always gets the girl, find that those happy endings constantly elude them.”Here's the transcript of the Rush show segment, "The Left Takes Another Human Tragedy and Converts It Into a Political Issue." Excerpt:
Both [Seth] Rogen and Apatow slammed Hornaday and called the critic misinformed, with Apatow adding that she “milked tragedy.”
I can't tell you the number of guys I knew growing up that were bragging about all the sex they were having and it was simply a dream. They wanted everybody to think it, but they couldn't get past first base any better than this kid could. And the ones who weren't talking about it were the ones that you learned later on that were the studs. And they weren't talking about it because of manners, self-respect, respect for the girls involved, who knows what.Of course, movies are that teenboy dream, the bragging of sexually unattractive males like Apatow and Rogen who — via Hollywood — get into a position to make the dream look real through the magic of cinema. Unlike the consumers of the cinema, the filmmakers acquire the money to make the dream real in their lives, even as Rush, through his radio magic, has acquired the money to get him the women he could only dream of in high school.
Rodger was the rich kid who reasoned that since he already had the money, he should already be the man to whom women yield. They didn't, and in his impoverished mind, he couldn't get any farther than that. He had to walk out of the rom-com showing on screen 1 in the multiplex and into the slasher film on screen 2.
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67 comments:
If guns and games are always blamed for these things -- why IS it so wrong to wonder if movies are a part of the equation?
If art can make people more creative and expressive, why is it so unfathomable that it can make them more barbaric as well?
Nothing is a positive outcome-only panacaea.
The world is filled with frustrated people, angry with others over what they don't have but feel entitled to. There was an additional element in this case--something that made this guy not only fantasize about killing but to carry it out.
Anti-gun folk will blame the "easy access to guns" (in California, apparently?); some feminists will blame a misogynistic culture that makes people like this murderer feel entitled to women to such an extent that he was willing to go on a killing spree; anti-Hollywood types will blame the popular culture--everyone's going to bang the same drum they've been banging forever because it's all they know how to do.
Meanwhile, the depressing thing is that this sort of thing happens and there may be no preventing it.
This entire event is such a tragedy and it is shameful the way public figures and the media have made such a ideological hash out of it.
The boy was deeply disturbed and destroyed many lives lashing out at the world he saw: Now the jackals bloody muzzles are stripping the meat from the dead boys bones and fighting over the choicer bits. Pretty disgusting really.
Guy was on psychiatric lifeline since he was 8, way before girls start to matter, and now we are to believe that he went crazy from the misogyny? Chris Rock has already handled this nonsense a few years ago.
Chris Rock: "What has happened to crazy?"
There is a certain irony -- if not a little schadenfreude if you're on the right -- in seeing Hornaday treat white males in Hollywood as if they're the NRA (or Rush Limbaugh) in trying to take the root causes argument for Rodger's rampage and blame it on their movies.
It still skirts the idea of blaming the shooter, or focusing on the things his parents and/or law enforcement failed to do, or on the fact the federal HIPPA laws limit the information that can get out to law enforcement so they can have more forewarning. But it is interesting that in the current push to attack 'white male privilege' for whatever the crisis of the day happens to be, having the proper political ideology in Hollywood or donating to the proper politicians or political causes no longer protects you from the PC police (Patton Oswalt, Louie CK, Alec Baldwin and several other liberal celebs already have found that out, and have already started to push back in their own ways against the hot new trend, because now its their careers on the line if things continue as they are).
Why do people want to hang their hats on Rodger's emotions, when he was so obviously emotionally unbalanced.
This isn't the guy who went to the party and tried to charm women and left dissuaded.
This was the guy who cried when a group of other teenagers came to his house because they were his age and having fun with each other. Had a tantrum right in front of them, rather than interacting!
Rodger should not be anybody's example of the culture at large.
Dang. I forgot the apostrophe in "boy's"
So important as "The crux of the biscuit is the apostrophe:" -Frank Zappa
This latest murderer didn't just have issues, he had whole subscriptions. News reports say he was in therapy since age eight. He was able to legally purchase a firearm three times in a state with tough gun laws. None of the background checks turned up anything that would stop the purchases. You can't always look at someone and tell if they're mentally ill or pose a threat to others. Reports say he was interviewed by police officers just a few weeks ago and they found no cause to hold him. If the cops couldn't tell he was mentally ill, how could gun store clerks?
It's likely that our legitimate need for medical privacy and the HIPPA laws are preventing doctors from entering the mental health data into those databases used for the background checks. How do we resolve our conflicting but both legitimate desires for medical privacy and preventing mentally ill people from purchasing firearms*? I don't know but am willing to listen to rational suggestions.
*This only applies to legal firearms purchases. No law is going to stop illegal gun purchases any more than laws stop other crimes.
Next hunger games movie will be about sex instead of food.
This kid was a bit, shall we say, effeminate. Have the Freudians left the room?
It is not the movies, it is not society, it is not books, it is not plays, it is not video games, it is not dancing, it is not guns, it is not any of the things that through the years people try to blame for the actions of a deranged individual.
It was his fault. Period.
If there was any truth to any of those things really causing violence, then murderous killing sprees will happen multiple times per day, every day across our country, rather than being a (fortunately) rare enough event that when it does happen, the news covers it incessantly.
Of all the proposed causes, though, I think the strongest case that can be made is that the media coverage, the infamy to be gained, that drives a lot of the recent killers to act out on their fantasies rather than just sit around and brood on the unfairness of life.
This kid was a bit, shall we say, effeminate. Have the Freudians left the room?
Brando: "Meanwhile, the depressing thing is that this sort of thing happens and there may be no preventing it."
There isn't.
I'm with Chris Rock on this one (hat tip to Ace of Spades): ""Chris Rock: [On the US school shootings] Everybody is wanting to know what music were the kids listening to, or what movies were they watching. Who gives a fuck what they was watching! Whatever happened to crazy? What, you can't be crazy no more? Should we eliminate crazy from the dictionary?"
The idea that these kinds of events are driven by any specific cultural context is just false. Here's description of the phenomenon -- written in 1968 about mass murderers in Papua New Guinea but which applies to this case (and many others) to a tee:
http://goo.gl/8sR6Xh
On the other hand, if there's ANY cultural connection here, maybe it's to his Indonesian ethnic background:
"Although commonly used in a colloquial and less-violent sense, the phrase is particularly associated with a specific sociopathic culture-bound syndrome in Malaysian culture. In a typical case of running amok, an individual (often male), having shown no previous sign of anger or any inclination to violence, will acquire a weapon (traditionally a sword or dagger, but presently any of a variety of weapons) and in a sudden frenzy, will attempt to kill or seriously injure anyone he encounters and himself. Amok typically takes place in a well populated or crowded area. Amok episodes of this kind normally end with the attacker being killed by bystanders or committing suicide..."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Running_amok#Malay.2FIndonesian_origin
Narcissistic Internet Psycho says:
Hollywood is a World of Lies. Women are paid to be pretty on camera and then they think they are deserving of special treatment. Other women watch these movies and then think they deserve special treatment, too. Women of Beauty do not realize special treatment should be provided by people like myself, super smart and a gentleman, my tastes are refined. I thought you were different, but your silence shows you are just like the others, vinegar thinking you are wine. If I am wrong please let me know, I would hate to give up on you and deprive you of my attentions, after all we've been through together. I read the comments of women on blogs and I imagine what they must look like naked.
Personally, I don't think Rogen is unattractive-I actually think he is really hot.
This crazy kid was an accident airing to happen. Most boys who can't get laid these days have pornography all over the place. It's in color and has amazingly pretty girls. When I was a kid we were limited to comic cooks, He was just a nut with homicidal impulses. Just like Lanza and Loughner.
Both [Seth] Rogen and Apatow slammed Hornaday and called the critic misinformed, with Apatow adding that she “milked tragedy.”
Imagine if these 2 felt that way when the NRA is blamed for these shootings?
Rush says:
"I can't tell you the number of guys I knew growing up that were bragging about all the sex they were having and it was simply a dream. They wanted everybody to think it, but they couldn't get past first base any better than this kid could."
Rush knows for a fact that one of those "guys he knew growing up" wasn't getting any action. Project much, Rush?
I dunno I call feel a palatable sense of disappointment in liberals who so dearly wanted to blame it on guns but have had to explain the knife stabbings and a culture of therapy and Hollywood privilege. They don't want to talk about that so they have to shut up for a while. Its kind of nice, actually.
"This kid was a bit, shall we say, effeminate. Have the Freudians left the room?"
Remember when Hollywood made movies about gay mass murderers? That hasn't been fashionable in a long time, but it once was. Dredge up some of that old crap, like the much-honored "Silence of the Lambs."
"Dredge up some of that old crap…"
Excavate some of those dried tokens of Hollywood's sojourn in homophobia...
"Anti-gun folk will blame the "easy access to guns"; some feminists will blame a misogynistic culture; anti-Hollywood types will blame the popular culture--everyone's going to bang the same drum they've been banging forever because it's all they know how to do."
Funny, I blame global warming.
Is anybody wanting to talk about college students being stuck with unstable, dangerous roommates and not knowing it?
What about Hong and Chen and their right to a sane roommate? What about their right to live?
What about the VaTech room ayes and all they went through, and the RA and dorm mate who were shot?
I know we have HIPAA laws, but what about the right to not have dangerous people foisted on you without being informed?
Money, money, money. Ann, I agree that guys like the Clippers owner get attractive younger women perhaps solely because of money. But I don't think that its fair to imply the same thing of Rush or other celebrities who became famous because of their charm, wit, conversation, etc. I would assume they are also attractive because they are winners and a blast to be with.
Professor
Not trying to dredge up any old crap. Note Titus.
It was once thought that homosexuals had issues with women. Perhaps that is an idea out of fashion. Perhaps Freud was full of shit. We note that is not discussed in the instant case notwithstanding the appearance of the subject.
I am not as tuned to Hollywood as I perhaps should be but dont think old "dried tokens" of movies is what I was alluding to.
"Not trying to dredge up any old crap."
I wasn't accusing you of doing that. I meant to say that people ought to do that -- throw it in Hollywood's ready-for-my-closeup face — dredge up the homophobic stuff that was in the old films.
Actually, the documentary "In the Celluloid Closet" does exactly that, extremely well.
I'd like to zero in on the palpable lie/mis-representation (if one feels charitable) the WaPo gal makes when she claims these Hollywood movies are fantasies of white male production staffs and "white privilege" when IN FACT in distinct contradiction, it is "settled science" (as it were) that today's tv and movie producers and their production staffs are almost exclusively, massively dominated by homosexuals and leftist feministas. Which is why young white hetero males have almost en toto fled the sort of cultural swill produced by such people that largely holds the key economic demographic of young, hetero white males in contempt (John Wayne and his buddies need not apply) and have moved instead to the more manly field of first-person shooter gaming...which ultimately will spell the demise of Hollywood and perhaps broad-cast tv..
In my culture the explanation is simple. He went amok as my people sometimes do. His mother was Malay and they also go amok. This is known.
Why complex psychology or cultural argument. Same thing has happened everywhere and forever. Part of human nature.
"Money, money, money. Ann, I agree that guys like the Clippers owner get attractive younger women perhaps solely because of money. But I don't think that its fair to imply the same thing of Rush or other celebrities who became famous because of their charm, wit, conversation, etc. I would assume they are also attractive because they are winners and a blast to be with."
I agree, and I'll bet Sterling has been charming in his day at times. Maybe he's charming while being racist. That could be a thing. Some people think that's a thing Rush does.
Money isn't enough on its own. That's what, I think, Rodger couldn't get his head around. He had the BMW, now… where are the foxes?!
Next time, try 5 [BMWs].
One of the first mass murderers, Camden's Howard Unruh, was homosexual Althouse.
The media needs to redirect its lens back upon itself. The common denominator amongst the incidents of mass shootings by disaffected youths is the shooters' wish to go out in what they see as a blaze of glory, which the media always dutifully provides.
I heard the Rush riff on Hunger Games yesterday. He didn't see the movie but intuitively knows that it's liberal bs. Maybe, maybe not. But Hunger Games cleverly presents the villains in such a way that both liberals and conservatives can hate them. The villains live in The Capital. They are thus either bureaucrats or capitalists depending on your tastes. They are definitely decadent, but some effort is made to portray the gays in a sympathetic manner. The arch villain is, of course, a straight white male but you can't readily identify his politics........I don't know if the Hunger. games are such great movies, but Jennifer Lawrence really sells them in the way Sean Connery sold the first few Bond movies........I think everyone can agree that
blacks, Mexicans, and gays were, in the past, unfairly depicted in movies. Not so much anymore, but the bad old days of stereotypes are hardly past. Nowadays, Hollywood picks on Republicans and Christian fundamentalists with a good deal more malice than they ever directed at marginal groups.
I would say that Woody Allen, based on physical looks and past sexual history, would be a problematic partner for many women. Nonetheless any number of gorgeous movie stars gush about what a treat it is to work with him and spend time in his company......Women's libidos are far more flexible than those of men.
All Rodger needed to do was be patient until he was in a 30+ crowd of well trained women willing to marriage/broker themselves for a comfortable life.
I don't think Rodger actually wanted sex, I think it angered and disgusted him.
I can't tell you the number of guys I knew growing up that were bragging about all the sex they were having and it was simply a dream. They wanted everybody to think it, but they couldn't get past first base any better than this kid could.
"Those summer nights
When we were young
We bragged of things
We'd never done
We were dreamers
Only dreamers"
-- Dennis De Young, Desert Moon
What about Hong and Chen and their right to a sane roommate? What about their right to live?
What about the VaTech room ayes and all they went through, and the RA and dorm mate who were shot?
--------
Rodger was living in a half-way house type place for adults with mental health problems. So, no, they didn't have a right to a sane roommate nor any particular expectation of one.
The facility surely thought he wasn't a *violent* insane person, when they placed him in the apartment, of course, as most insane people really aren't.
Rodger's high self-esteem desired women as an accessory, but his low self-confidence earned him a low standing. Unfortunately, he was unable or incapable of reconciling this discrepancy, and something or someone finally broke his frail ego.
Your last paragraph leads me to a theory that the rage against the 1% crowd led to the murders. Maslow's Hierarchy on Needs are, in order, Physiological, Safety, Love, Esteem, Self-Actualization. Beyond the Physiological and perhaps Safety, there is little connection to wealth yet the anti-wealth tells us that money is everything. The poor rich kid discovered that is not true but blames the females rather than the liars who claim wealth trumps everything.
No, Rodger was not living in a halfway house.
I don't know how that rumor got started, but it isn't true.
He was living in an apartment building that rented to students.
He had some assistance from a counseling group not associated with his apartment building-- some life coaches that would try to help him learn to be social.
It is unfair to his roommates to misreport their living conditions.
21st century fairy tales are bad for boys' health.
It's impossible to know what effect Hunger Games might have had on Rogers. What I object to is Hollywood taking the position that it could not possibly have any effect. Of course it could.
Titus said:
Personally, I don't think Rogen is unattractive-I actually think he is really hot.
A number of people have commented that he looked a bit gay. Just looking at him, from your perspective, do you think that it is possible that he was latently homosexual, and that was possibly the root problem with his inability to deal with women?
I wouldn't mind any of the gays here chiming in - if you saw this guy's pictures, and nothing else, would you think it more likely than average that he was gay? Or straight?
That said, this is trendy S.CA, and, to me, he looked pretty metrosexual, which I suspect is more common there than most anywhere else. And, coincidentally, I saw the South Park episode a couple nights ago on metrosexuals. It was quite humorous, as a lot of the guys in town went metrosexual, but didn't quite get it when the gays (in particular, the teacher who ultimately had a sex change operation) tried to pick them up. (And, in real life, the people living in and around South Park, CO, are the furthest thing from metrosexuals - more likely, long hairs that went back up into the mountains decades ago, or just normal rural America).
And here I thought that "The Red Badge of Courage" and "All Quiet on the Western Front", and "the Sands of Iwo Jima" were about teenagers killing other teenagers.
Loved, "West Side Story", though.
In my culture the explanation is simple. He went amok as my people sometimes do. His mother was Malay and they also go amok. This is known.
Why complex psychology or cultural argument. Same thing has happened everywhere and forever. Part of human nature.
But he didn't run amok. He wasn't normal, and he didn't have a sudden break from a normal life.
Personally, I don't think his parents ever took the time to educate him. Anyone who has young children recognizes this emotional state. It comes on shortly after a child develops ego consciousness. Irritable, selfish, etc., they learn what "I" means, but they haven't quite figured out that everyone else is an "I". Usually children grow past this because they've got parents, friends, and a community that teaches "we're all autonomous beings too, so know your place." This kid was shipped off to a psychiatrist at age 8, when really he needed his parents and maybe little league baseball.
I'm thinking that all his social education came from watching TV and movies, which makes sense when you read parts of his manifesto: people are two-dimensional caricatures, particularly his descriptions of women. His expectations for human interaction, specifically sexual interaction, seem to be that such interactions should be pre-scripted ('My dad's famous and I drive a BMW--there should be a hot blonde coming around any second to give me fellatio.'). When his real life experience didn't follow the script, he reacted like a toddler: rage, tantrums, lashing out.
It's totally understandable why people think his condition was akin to autism. He didn't see people as actual people. In other cultures they would say of him, "He had no soul."
Rush is all about performance, an empty suit.
Vicki from Pasadena
The Hunger Games is about the 1% forcing teenagers to kill other teenagers to scare them into working shit jobs their whole lives without organized revolt while the 1% lives in opulence. Elliot Rodger was a Panem wannabe all the way, so no.
More seriously, he did say he obsessed about the frat-boy fantasy movie.
In a small way, no, of course, it was his personal mental distortions. In a larger way, however, our popular culture does crossover into "the arena of the unwell" and as it revolves around the capitalist selling of media fantasy images. Just go to a country where it isn't as prevalent (there are a few left) and you'll see what I mean. Of course, those countries will have their own issues writ large in other forms.
Forced roommate situations can really be a powder keg. It's amazing how ugly it can get.
I lived in a student co-op for a year which had the same "apartment with separate rooms and assigned roommates" situation.
One girl was isolated and angry much like Elliot. We found drawings of us (the other roommates) together with violent revenge fantasies that included killing us. Being female, she didn't get a gun, she just became an extreme bulimic until she failed out of school. (See the post on women's "complicated relationship with food.")
Another, more attractive, supposedly mentally healthy, extroverted girl got as angry as Elliot that the more introverted girl had an "ideal" romance going and proceeded to wait for her chance to fuck the other girl's live-in, first-love boyfriend in a particularly vicious, counting coup, take your man way - sending the other girl into a spiraling depression that ended with her dropping out for two semesters.
I hear that there has been a real generational change as well since a lot of college-bound kids are only children now. They are refusing to double up in the dorms and want their own room. They used to have single rooms when only richer people went to college.
The "sarcastically" is helpful, because people who don't listen to the show really do have trouble understanding what Rush is trying to say... especially if they are anti-Rush, and the fact is that Rush loves to rope in his antagonists and laugh at the way they don't get him. Listeners — and I am one — are encouraged to think of ourselves as in-the-know insiders. We get it.
Then along comes bbkingfish:
Rush knows for a fact that one of those "guys he knew growing up" wasn't getting any action. Project much, Rush?
Thanks for proving the point.
Why complex psychology or cultural argument. Same thing has happened everywhere and forever. Part of human nature.
Yep. See MarkW's post at 9:00 AM.
That's the thing about humans though; they have the same hangups they've always had, yet still believe they can "cure" themselves of those hangups.
acm said...Rodger was living in a half-way house type place for adults with mental health problems. So, no, they didn't have a right to a sane roommate nor any particular expectation of one.
I think you're wrong about that. The apartment complex where they lived was basically college student housing, and, according to this piece in the Los Angeles Times:
"Wang, Chen and Hong were close friends as well as roommates, according to classmates. They had a shared Chinese heritage, and they loved playing video games and talking about computer engineering. Chen and Hong were the children of immigrants – Hong’s from Taiwan – and Wang and his parents had emigrated from mainland China a decade ago.
'They were all optimistic guys,' Yan said.
Friends of the trio said they believed Rodger was placed in the apartment by the complex management and that they never mentioned him."
The killer in Silence of the Lambs wasn't gay. He also wasn't transgendered.
He thought he was gay for awhile but it didn't work, so then he moved on to believing he was the woman caught in a man's body, but the doctors turned down his sex change operation request because he was a psycho, not a transgendered female. The movie (and book) were actually criticizing the stereotype.
Was Norman Bates supposed to be gay?
Hollywood donates ZILLIONS of dollars to the Democrats.
So yes, they 'won't go there'.
Victoria (aka Vicky from out there) said: "Rush is all about performance, an empty suit."
You apparently are not a regular listener. The empty suit has more listeners than any talk show anywhere.
What type suit would you label vaunted radio personality Special Ed Shultz? Other than large, that is.
Allow me to piss a lot of people off (and then qualify my initial statement until all but the most unreasonable of them are assuaged):
The murderer didn't have a well-formed conscience. He lacked that because he had an entirely irreligious upbringing.
Do all persons with an entirely irreligious upbringing have such badly-formed consciences? No; and of course some folks raised in religious households wind up with badly-formed consciences through various failures of transmission.
But among the many intended (and usually at least partly-achieved) lessons of the religious upbringing are the lessons that...
1. People are valuable;
2. We are obligated to intend (and where possible, achieve so far as it falls within our power and responsibility) the good of the other person as other;
3. It is a sin to use another person as if they were a mere object for our self-satisfaction, or to indulge in hatred towards them;
4. It is righteous, when slighted, to "turn the other cheek" and to "return good for evil";
5. Human sexuality is the greatest natural good, and its intended end is the formation of permanent loving family bonds which, if all goes well, produce dynasties of happy and well-adjusted new human beings visiting Grandma and Grandad's house every Christmas/Hannukah;
6. Coveting another man's wife (or, by extension, girlfriend) is a sin;
7. Oh, and, lest I forget: Thou shalt not murder (in fact, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself).
Religious upbringings, attempted with lesser and greater degrees of skill and effort, tend to inculcate these lessons with lesser and greater degrees of success, according to the willingness of the student to receive them.
But there is no trace of such a worldview in this kid's final mopey whining.
He thought sex was for pleasure, and that pleasure was an end in itself, rather than a reward for family-building.
And he thought that women were receptacles for enjoying orgasm who, being mere objects for his use, owed that usage to him.
These are the premises from which he argued to himself that he was being mistreated by people around him.
Given his premises, his argument was relatively sound! ...but his premises are profoundly false.
I'm sure the kid had problems of brain-chemistry or psychological trauma or whatever else: I'm granting all that.
And persons with an irreligious upbringing often do, by natural reason and cultural acclimatization, glom on to the same moral principles emphasized in a religious upbringing, even if its derivation from their own philosophical principles is less obvious or authoritative.
So I am certainly not saying something like "if you're an atheist, you're a mass-murderer waiting to blossom." That's arrant nonsense.
But I betcha that if this same kid, with the same cerebral biochemistry, had been raised by, oh, Samuel Boteach, say, or Elizabeth Scalia, there would have been no mass shooting.
There'd have been other, lesser, problems, no doubt. But a larger number of intellectual, emotional, cultural, and habitual firewalls would have stood in the way of such an event.
Note: I have nowhere in here argued that one ought to practice a religion for any reason other than that one thinks its claims are factual.
And of course there are religions, and then there are religions. One must distinguish between, say, Pope Francis' Catholicism and Leader Mao's Cultural Revolution; between Quakerism and Wait-In-Line-For-My-New-iPhone-Consumerism; between B'nai Brith and Al Qaeda. When I speak of "religious upbringing" I have in mind things resembling the first item in the preceding pairs, not the second.
My point is solely this: Whatever the truth or falsehood of Mormonism or Judaism or Catholicism or Seventh-Day Adventism, the inculcation in the mainstream-while-devout forms thereof would have been helpful to this kid...not to mention the other people, whom he slew.
Apparently some people have a problem with murder. Rodger didn't.
The same people laugh at the other restrictions in the 10 Commandments because, after all, there is no God, so why should I follow some silly male-created ancient code or teach it to my children or in our schools?
Adultery? Hah! If it feels good, do it.
Lying? Perfectly acceptable for our elite betters. (But don't lie to the betters. It's a one-way street.)
Blasphemy? Against a non-existent skygod? Don't make them laugh.
Dishonoring parents? Where did that come from?
Honoring the Sabbath? Are. You. Kidding? Puuuleazzze. It's the 21st century.
This kid was simply operating by his own code. It's as valid as anyone else's, right?
If we're simply atoms randomly smashing against one another with no purpose or higher responsibility to each other and their Creator than personal satisfaction for the moment, Rodger was acting quite within his code.
Apparently some people have a problem with murder. Rodger didn't.
The same people laugh at the other restrictions in the 10 Commandments because, after all, there is no God, so why should I follow some silly male-created ancient code or teach it to my children or in our schools?
Adultery? Hah! If it feels good, do it.
Lying? Perfectly acceptable for our elite betters. (But don't lie to the betters. It's a one-way street.)
Blasphemy? Against a non-existent skygod? Don't make them laugh.
Dishonoring parents? Where did that come from?
Honoring the Sabbath? Are. You. Kidding? Puuuleazzze. It's the 21st century.
This kid was simply operating by his own code. It's as valid as anyone else's, right?
If we're simply atoms randomly smashing against one another with no purpose or higher responsibility to each other and their Creator than personal satisfaction for the moment, Rodger was acting quite within his code.
To the Dad who has lost his son...
Condolences
The Dad has exclaimed that he only wanted to live somewhere safe. Might I suggest, try Belgium. They have 'restrictive' gun laws.
He was mentally deranged which means that most, if not all, of what he wrote was delusional and can be ignored. Why aren't we debating the issue that should be forefront?
It isn't the sex or the gun issue, or even our reaction to it, but dumping the mentally ill into communities without notifying authorities -- at a minimum, police or the college -- that he had major problems. An omission that could be thought by some as heedlessly endangering the lives of others?
If he didn't have $5,000 spare cash to spend on guns and lived on rough streets, would he have been less of a threat? Probably. Whose fault is that? Who, then, you could ask, armed him? If he didn't have a parent-provided housing and a parent-supplied car in a community where you were not routinely expected to provide your own self-defense, would those people he is alleged to have deliberately run down be safer? Undoubtedly. Who, then, you might ask, armed him with a car?
David Attias, whose father is a Hollywood Director, deliberately ran down and killed four students in 2001 in Isla Vista. He, too, had a life long problem with mental instability. Attias was 18, so at least his victims families could sue the Hollywood director. (Although I cannot find what happened to the case.)
Don't parents who pay tuition have the moral responsibility to others to warm others about the possibility of disruptive behavior? Don't they have a moral responsibility to other parents? Other students?
Or do we no longer demand or even remotely expect morality and responsibility in any part of this sad play?
I believe the Hunger Games are about a 2nd Hillary Term, right after Obama's 2 terms. Between them, they've so destroyed the market place that business is almost non-existent. In order to keep things for themselves, they have to fence themselves in, with the power elites and real believers, and leave the rest to fend for themselves.
In order to placate those who are not on the inside, they come up with the Hunger Games, when people can go to war for the right to live high on the hog for a year.
Of course it's crude and not thoroughly thought out, but one things for sure, this isn't a business oriented Republican world in the Hunger Games, it's definitely liberals who have screwed the whole thing up and decided to keep theirs and throw the rest bones for as long as they can.
The hunger games is about a 2nd Hillary term which, after Obama had 2 terms, has so completely destroyed the economy as we know it, they've been forced to fence themselves in to maintain a higher standard of living.
In order to placate those left out, they come up with the Hunger Games so those left out can live high on the hog for a year.
One things for sure, this isn't about a successful Republican economy where business is thriving and people are well off.
Belgium safe because of restrictive guns laws? Was that a bad joke? Belgium Jewish museum shooter was carrying camera -- official Last week four people were murdered at the Jewish Museum of Belgium by a guy who was wearing a video camera so he could record the event. Much like the murders in Toulouse, France in 2012. The Toulouse and Montauban shootings were a series of three gun attacks targeting French soldiers and Jewish civilians in the cities of Montauban and Toulouse in the Midi-Pyrénées region of France in March 2012.[2][3][4] In total, seven people were killed, and five others were injured, four seriously. The perpetrator was shot and killed after a 30-hour siege with police. wiki.
I don't know why some people decide to kill other people. Why do they decide that's the only thing they can do to feel better?
The Day After a Deranged Gunman Shoots 3 to Death in Santa Barbara — Prompting Calls for America to Emulate Gun-Control Europe — 4 Are Gunned Down in Brussels (shocking video)
http://no-pasaran.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-day-after-deranged-gunman-shoots-3.html
Less than 24 hours after three people were shot to death by a California madman (not counting himself, while the three other victims were stabbed to death) — prompting attacks on America's gun culture and calls for the U.S. to emulate gun-control havens such as those in Europe —
the Daily News reports a gunman in Brussels "hustling through a hallway at [a] museum where he quickly unpacks the long gun and opens fire," killing four in the process
…/…
Much more comment on gun control
at the link, for those who might be interested…
Larry J,
"If the cops couldn't tell he was mentally ill, how could gun store clerks?"
That completely misunderstands the scenario. Gun store clerks aren't charged with performing mental-health evaluations on their customers! (How would they be qualified?) Instead, they're charged with doing the federal background check which is supposed to turn up any criminal or mental-health history, which in turn is based on actual adjudications, not on the individual clerk's gut feeling.
kcom,
"Funny, I blame global warming."
See? I knew it was the Republicans' fault!!!
virgil,
"...which ultimately will spell the demise of Hollywood and perhaps broad-cast tv.. "
By 'ultimately' do you perhaps mean 'next week'? This demise certainly can't happen soon enough.
So a 22-year-old son of Hollywood privilege goes on a murder spree, killing 6 and then himself. People who write for a living mount their favorite hobby horses and tell us “what it all means.”
Since we are all critics now, I want to get in on the action. What do we know? Quite a lot, actually. The killer wrote a “manifesto:” apparently a must-do for people who want to go out with a bang, and who have the time and leisure to chronicle their lives. I read the whole thing and it's fascinating because it reads like a movie script for a really bad film.
It seems that his hang-up is that he couldn't get girls. Living in Hollywood, rich, and couldn't get to first base. Which is strange, but also quite revealing. He lived in the epicenter of getting girls. Hollywood is all about getting girls. It is Jannah, the Islamic Paradise of girl getting. Men go there to find sexual objects – both female and male. Women go there to be gotten, advertising their attributes, real and enhanced. They are not shy or demure about it. Miley Cyrus rides an inflatable phallus and gets rich and famous for doing so. Some of the town’s hottest starlets made their debuts starring in their own home-made porno-flicks.
Closer to home, the killer’s father was not only in the movie industry, but sold “art” pictures of naked women. So what’s a 22 year old virgin to do when the thing that's at the center of his entire culture is denied to him? When his sexual pressure-cooker gets overheated? He blows up. And takes six people with him. His victims were the victims of a nut, made crazy by a culture where sex is literally everything: money, power, validation, gratification and identity. At one point he concludes that the route to sex is more money, lots of it, so he buys lottery tickets. He urges his mother to marry one of the wealthy men she knows so that he can be part of a uber-rich family and blames her for his sexual failure.
In other times and other places, people like Elliot Rodger may have become a hermit, a priest or found another objective. But he was living in a place and time where sex was the center of everything. In a strange and inverted way, Elliott Rodger, insane killer, was made by Hollywood.
These acts are committed for attention and fame. So of course when we try to politicize these acts of madness and score a cheap ideological point we are giving the murderer exactly what he wants. So the next troubled loser looks around and thinks "just commit a few murders and they will all be hyper-analyzing me too and fighting over what motivated me and I will be a star."
Btw, the Hunger Games was anti-violence and a greatanti-totalitarian statement. You can interpret it Left or Right.
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