Althouse: "We too are asking why..."

December 15, 2012

"We too are asking why..."

"Like so many of you, we are saddened, but struggling to make sense of what has transpired."

27 comments:

Palladian said...: There is no sense to be made of what happened.; 12/15/12, 8:08 PM
Patrick said...: God bless this man, and the souls of the dead.; 12/15/12, 8:09 PM
Ann Althouse said...: There are thousands of fathers who are in the position that this man was in before the murders.

Why don't they know who they are? Why don't they find meaning before it's too late to do something about it?; 12/15/12, 8:17 PM
pm317 said...: Why don't they know who they are? Why don't they find meaning before it's too late to do something about it?

They ran away from it because they could, leaving the 'problem' to the ex-wife. Yeah, he paid her a generous alimony and moved on perhaps with a younger and beautiful new wife. The ex-wife got stuck with the problem child, no real prospect for remarriage. Oh joy and happiness!; 12/15/12, 8:24 PM
Palladian said...: Hey, no more alimony! And no more embarrassing troubled son! Now it's just you and your new wife and your "good" son that you set up at Ernst & Young. Meaning!; 12/15/12, 8:28 PM
chickelit said...: I've always avoided the verb "transpire" in that passive voice construction. It reminds me of "comprise" and "react" --two other verbs misused passively.; 12/15/12, 8:31 PM
Hagar said...: Hasn't there been enough jumping to conclusions based on nothing but speculation in this case?

Now you need to expand it to the living too?; 12/15/12, 8:43 PM
Palladian said...: It's called entertainment, Hagar.; 12/15/12, 8:46 PM
Synova said...: I wonder if there is a fundamental error involved in any attempt to make sense of what is senseless.; 12/15/12, 8:48 PM
Renee said...: I thought the mother initiated the divorce? The children usually have a say as teens who they want to live with.; 12/15/12, 8:49 PM
Automatic_Wing said...: Hey, no more alimony! And no more embarrassing troubled son! Now it's just you and your new wife and your "good" son that you set up at Ernst & Young. Meaning!

You ought to take a break from being on that moral high horse all the time. It must be exhausting.; 12/15/12, 8:53 PM
DADvocate said...: They ran away from it because they could, leaving the 'problem' to the ex-wife.

Is there any factual basis for this comment and the other similar comments? The numbers I find vary any were from 90% to 66% for divorce being initiated by the woman. Divorce laws certainly don't favor men.; 12/15/12, 9:00 PM
Kelly said...: I think it is strange that the older brother hadn't spoken to his younger brother in two years. There was an obvious break in the family, perhaps sons taking opposing sides. There was a break in the family, but nothing can ever explain why the guy did what he did.; 12/15/12, 9:05 PM
pm317 said...: DADvocate said...
--------------

I don't have any factual basis and I know I am leaping to conclusions. But it seems easier for men (than women), especially those who are very successful to walk away and the leave the women hanging. So you want to look at stats pertaining to a certain type of marriage -- inequality between the man and the woman. I don't know. It just seems no one would voluntarily put themselves in the situation that mother was in. If it was a substandard marriage complicated further with problem children, I don't know what the solution is. Left to me, my ethical obligation would be to take full responsibility for my marriage and support the spouse and the children we together brought into this world and not make it worse by divorce and so on. Divorce in this country is too easy and more often than not, the woman (who for whatever reason would not have invested in developing her own prospects) is left holding the bag. I don't know -- I think divorce makes the situation worse for children and the adults in their life should behave responsibly and honorably.; 12/15/12, 9:13 PM
Lydia said...: If my little child had been killed yesterday by this guy's son, I don't think I'd want to hear anything at all from him at this point. I think I'd probably hate him.

And I certainly wouldn't want to be asked to feel his pain.; 12/15/12, 9:14 PM
DADvocate said...: pm317 - You're wrong about who's left hanging, etc. The stats about women getting poorer and the men prospering are lies and incorrect. Check them out.

As a divorced man with a psycho ex-wife, I can attest to the pathology of some women. My 16 year old daughter refuses to spend the night with her mother and rarely speaks to her. My ex told her brother she hoped he died when she heard he had cancer. He died and she didn't attend the funeral. Only one of her 8 surviving siblings will speak to her. They all speak to me, even invite me and the kids over for Thanksgiving and Christmas. I genuinely live in fear that she will drive one of my sons (19 and 24) into killing her or someone else.

Thee are plenty of villains, but let's at least be fair. Maybe Adam Lanza had some reason to shoot his mother. We might find out. I don't think his father and brother were obligated to hang around and get their heads blown off too.; 12/15/12, 9:28 PM
edutcher said...: Standard Obamatron boilerplate.

He knows why - the kid should have been institutionalized years ago, everybody saw it coming.; 12/15/12, 9:29 PM
kentuckyliz said...: Institutionalized where?; 12/15/12, 10:45 PM
Browndog said...: Shut up. You have the right to remain silent. Any flaw, any human characteristic will be used against you in the court of public opinion. You are nothing but a paycheck, and be thankful that the only heir to your namesake was aborted, without your consent.

Men are but a scourge. Week, self-indulgent. We have the data and sit-coms to prove it.

Women, gay-sex people, and the government are better Fathers, and love your children more than any of you flat-Earth neanderthals ever could.

It takes a real man to admit that he is a lesser man, a failure, compared to non-men.; 12/15/12, 11:01 PM
cathy said...: He surely alternated from being mean to being repentful like the boy at the party in the last post. Any parent would know the sincere side quite well and hope the violent side wouldn't be this bad. Another thing, the parents were probably divided on how to treat the kid and I'd bet blamed the other for having the strange heredity. So yeah, he should look a little harder at his role. Can't imagine the dad's pain though.; 12/15/12, 11:03 PM
wildswan said...: I think the President is a total hypocrite to be sobbing about these children when he ordered the Fast and the Furious - 400 dead Mexicans, some of them children. What about Susan Rice refusing better security to the African embassies and thousands killed, many of them children. Yet she was the President's choice to run the State department. Captain Drone, the hypocrite.; 12/15/12, 11:22 PM
KCFleming said...: Is there some PR template set of quotes for these people?

It all sounds the same. Oblique blablahblah horseshit pablum. Don't mean nothin. Infuriating form letter non-apology.

Better just to say he's sorry and he has nothing useful to say in a horror such as this.; 12/15/12, 11:27 PM
Palladian said...: Pogo, you can bet he consulted with a team of lawyers already. I wouldn't be surprised if his lawyer wrote the copy of his statement.; 12/15/12, 11:30 PM
Anonymous said...: I have no idea what to make of this man's statement or his family's situation.

I grew up in a fairly bizarre family -- multiple suicides, murder, alcoholism, drug addiction, mental illness -- and no one from the outside could know what was going on with us from the window of one terrible day and a few sentences from a couple members.

A nasty part of it all was the rush to judgment by outsiders to decide which of us was to blame.; 12/15/12, 11:40 PM
KCFleming said...: Probably so.

The ritual nonapology is a most dreary kabuki.

Some day I hope we can replace it with an acronym or a hand signal.

Maybe CTRL C, CTRL V.; 12/15/12, 11:41 PM
Anonymous said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 12/16/12, 12:33 AM
Synova said...: Saying that he escaped and his wife didn't...

I didn't read the article. I really do think it's wrong to try to understand what can't be understood because the only thing to do is create fiction.

Suppose, however, this fiction...

A father and a mother disagree over what ought to be done to help a clearly disturbed child. The mother thinks that the father is too harsh. The father thinks that it does not help to lavish and coddle. The mother chooses the son over her husband. The mother chooses her version of what is best for the troubled child.

The mother was wrong.

It's a fiction.

And just as useful as all the others.; 12/16/12, 12:47 AM