Rush Limbaugh--It Was All A Joke!

Apparently people like Blue Girl get results because Media Matters is reporting that:

On the April 23 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, host Rush Limbaugh claimed "I was making a joke" when he said on his April 19 broadcast that Virginia Tech gunman Cho Seung-Hui "had to be a liberal, " and "it's a liberal that committed this act" before adding on April 23, "I do believe that it was liberalism that got a hold of this guy and made him hate things, professors and this sort of thing." Limbaugh also lashed out at Media Matters for America, claiming that he had made the comments about Cho "as a means of illustrating on this show how the words of conservative talk show hosts are twisted and taken out of context," before adding, "And sure enough, Media Matters fell for it hook, line, and sinker. They had it up all over the place."

Another example of the comic stylings of Rush Limbaugh, or somebody who realizes that he took two steps over the line? You be the judge.

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Limbaugh--Liberals Are Going to Attack Me. Wah, Wah.

In an audacious display of verbal self-defense Radio Talk Show Host Rush Limbaugh admits he said

If this Virginia Tech shooter had an ideology, what do you think it was? This guy had to be a liberal. You start railing against the rich and all this other -- this guy's a liberal. He was turned into a liberal somewhere along the line. So it's a liberal that committed this act

ABC News' Political Punch goes on to report that, anticipating that liberals would take umbrage at his obvious link of Cho to Liberalism, he tried to insulate himself from criticism by saying

Now, the drive-bys will read on a website that I'm attacking liberalism by comparing this guy to them. That's exactly what they do every day, ladies and gentlemen. I'm just pointing out a fact. I am making no extrapolation; I'm just pointing it out.

Apparently he ducked and covered right after he made the offensive remarks about liberals. Old Oxycontin can dish it out, but he can't take it.

Are decent Americans going to take this? When will we tell this blowhard to sit down and listen if he doesn't have anything to say.

Right on cue the utterly shameless freepers (or is that creepers) have taken up the mighty right wing Wurlitzer's new unfounded charge that the Virginia Tech massacre was caused by liberals or "liberalism." And we are still setting on our hands. What's wrong with us? Where is our fight?

If you want to have a good time read the comments thread at ABC's site. Not many defending Rush. After you have learned you are not alone start writing your own comments and send them to Newt and Rush and any of their enablers in the big time media you can think of.

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Shame on You Newt. Shame on You Rush

In his April 19, 2007, broadcast Rush Limbaugh said

If this Virginia Tech shooter had an ideology, what do you think it was? This guy had to be a liberal. You start railing against the rich and all this other -- this guy's a liberal. He was turned into a liberal somewhere along the line. So it's a liberal that committed this act. Now, the drive-bys will read on a website that I'm attacking liberalism by comparing this guy to them. That's exactly what they do every day, ladies and gentlemen. I'm just pointing out a fact. I am making no extrapolation; I'm just pointing it out.

This morning Newt Gingrich blamed Liberalism for the Virginia Tech massacre.

I don't know about you, but I am sick to death of these wacko conservative ideologues exploiting tragedies like Virginia Tech for political gain. Cho wasn't a liberal, and no sane American of any stripe would claim him. Mass murderers come in both no and all ideologies. Timothy McViegh was ostensibly an arch conservative. There were mass murderers before there were "conservatives" and "liberals." Ever read about Bloody Kansas before the civil war? Was Bloody Bill Anderson a liberal or a conservative? What about John Brown?

The truth is people like the Columbine killers, Charles Whitman, and Cho kill because they are mentally ill, and driven by feelings of inadequacy none of us understand. Others like Bill Anderson or Timothy McVeigh claim their killings are justified by their ideology. I think that is hogwash. They kill because they put their drive for personal power above the lives of others. Still others like Osama Bin Laden or any number of religious fanatics, such as John Brown, kill because they say their God has told them too. The truth is, mass murderers kill because they do not respect the lives of others. They are selfish to the extreme. Many suffer from the delusion that their victims are not human, not deserving of respect.

Why don't we all write Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh and tell them what we think. Here is Rush Limbaugh's contact information. You can find Newt Gingrich here. Pass this forward. Millions need to tell these crass ideologues "shame on you." Its time to put a stop to this nonsense.

And if some "liberal" tries to blame "conservatives" we need to call shame on that indifferent fool as well.

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The Real Scandal Behind the Virginia Tech Killings

ABC News is reporting that "a court found that Virginia Tech killer Seung-Hui Cho was "mentally ill" and potentially dangerous. Then it let him go."

According to the "Temporary Detention Order" obtained by ABC News, psychologist Roy Crouse found Cho's "affect is flat and mood is depressed.

"He denies suicidal ideation. He does not acknowledge symptoms of a thought disorder," Dr. Crouse wrote. "His insight and judgment are normal."

That information came to light two days after Cho, a Virginia Tech senior, killed 32 people and then himself in a shooting rampage on the university's campus.


'An Imminent Danger to Himself'

The evaluation came from a psychiatric hospital near Virginia Tech, where Cho was taken by police in December 2005, after two female schoolmates said they received threatening messages from him, and police and school officials became concerned that he might be suicidal.

After Dr. Crouse's psychological evaluation of Cho, Special Justice Paul M. Barnett certified the finding, ordering followup treatment on an outpatient basis

Apparently, Cho never went for that followup treatment. Nobody followed up. If they had they might have discovered the man capable of this.



Few people realize that a generation ago, for a variety of reasons, most states dismantled most of their inpatient mental health facilities. Nearly everybody is promptly released. In my community we call them the walking wounded. They are everywhere. Mostly they end up in jail, but only after they commit a crime. Apparently they are allowed one free murder. Then society will act. Just today
the Supreme Court heard the case of Panetti v. Quarterman which asks the question, just how crazy does a person have to be to avoid the death penalty? Apparently nobody is asking the more important question, just who was responsible for letting Panetti walk around Texas in the first place given his mental history? Make no mistake Panetti, like Cho, was known to be crazy, but was allowed to walk around right up to the moment he killed his in-laws.

The real scandal highlighted by Virginia Tech is that in the name of personal freedom, but really in the name of lowering State taxes, America seems to have adopted a rule that every crazy gets one free chance to commit murder.

Here is a link to MSNBC's slide show and video. It is very revealing. Cho wasn't just a young male loner. He was psychotic. He was psychotic two years ago, and somebody decided to let him loose. I wonder if it was because Virginia needed to free up his bed.

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Are the Conventional Signs Really Signs? Virginia Tech and Conventional "Wisdom"

The giant headline on this morning's Huffington Post is "There Were Warning Signs." The AP Article it links uses that old familiar phrase. "He was a loner." His teachers were alarmed by his "twisted, violence-drenched creative writing." He left a note.

A law enforcement official who read Cho's note described it Tuesday as a typed, eight-page rant against rich kids and religion. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

"You caused me to do this," the official quoted the note as saying

I guess the press and the officials have figured it out. Cho Seung-Hui was just like the Columbine killers. Nothing to see here. Move along. Of course, he wasn't just like the Columbine killers. They fed off each other. Theirs was a "group" atrocity. Most violence, from war to gang fights to domestic violence, is part of a group dynamic of some sort. Cho was utterly alone.

I have to wonder. How rare are young male "loners?" It seems to me in my long years I have known a lot of young male "loners" who didn't fit in. They stayed to themselves and brooded. They struggled with their aloneness. They were sad depressed figures. They were among my acquaintances growing up. For a while when I was about 15, I was one of them. Later, as a scout leader, I encountered several young "loners." Most of us made friends, recovered and led productive lives. It seems that for the loners I have known recovery started about the time they become valuable to the community and were accepted as men. Except for a very few who fought in Vietnam none of us killed anybody.

I also wonder whether Quentin Tarantino or Steven King were referred to psychological counselling by their creative writing teachers? Should they have been? Both have made millions of dollars writing stories that are very, very disturbing. Last I looked their body counts are all in their imaginations but their imaginations have produced stories read or viewed by millions of Americans. A mere glance at the history of American entertainment, it is obvious that tales of violence find a ready market for an industry aimed at the youth and young adult market. Violent "loner" fiction is a corner stone of American pop culture.

The pattern continues when we look at new media. Craig A. Anderson suggests that video games have been training young Americans to be violent. That may or may not be true, but I wonder if Anderson isn't studying an effect rather than a cause. There is and always has been a market for violence among young people.

I don't think the label "loner" and the references to his disturbing writings begin to explain why Cho killed 33 and wounded 30 more at Virginia Tech, but the label and the references do allow us to ignore trying to find out, and that seems to be important to a lot of people. Maybe we are afraid to look closely? Maybe we should?

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