Organizing your writing life

THE HOURS AND THE TIMES: We now know what Cho Seung-Hui was doing in the hours between shooting two people in a dorm on the campus of Virginia Tech and the mass murder he committed in a classroom across campus: he was mailing a multi-media manifesto to NBC News from the campus post office. He overnighted the package, but put the wrong address, so it arrived today. NBC showed edited clips of the profanity-filled "last words," which included snippets of video and chilling images of him brandishing the guns he used in the killings. In the clip, his flat emotionless voice says his actions could have been avoided. Photos show his emotions swinging wildly; in some photos he's smiling and in others his eyes are black with rage. He looks demonic. A 23-page written statement is full of rambling text, but tellingly evokes the teenagers who shot up Columbine High School as "martyrs." Cho rails against the rich, debauchery, hedonism, Christianity and more.

Also revealed today was how Virginia Tech, medical health authorities and various law enforcement agencies failed to keep Cho on the radar. He was at least twice questioned by police for stalking female students, the administration knew of him and professors (including Nikki Giovanni) had warned he was possibly dangerous. He was taken to mental facilities for evaluation and a judge declared him mentally ill and a danger to himself. He fell through the cracks of society as so many mentally ill do. Some become homeless, some are in jail, some are silently plotting their own destruction and that of others. Something horrible happened to this 23-year-old at some point in his life. I wonder if that will ever be revealed? I also find it interesting that he was an English major, studying both playwrighting and poetry.

Fellow blogger and poet Rachel is pissed off because the community let Cho down, and she's right. On the other hand, he was an adult and not a child. We live in a politically correct society run amok, where people will sue you or create a media firestorm if they feel they are being unjustly accused. Virginia Tech wouldn't risk bad publicity and charges of racism (because that certainly would have come up) by expelling Cho after the stalking incidents and the diagnosis of mental illness. Cho never threatened anyone, so they had no choice but to let him return to class. The fact that criminal charges were never filed, also allowed him to buy the two handguns. Again, we need to re-open the discussion on gun control. There's no one person to blame in the end, although many people would like to find a scapegoat. There is just a society that has become numb, or too busy or too scared to do anything about the mentally ill. That lack of attention is what causes tragic events like what happened in Blacksburg on Monday.

While all this is happening in America, nearly 200 innocent people died in Iraq today in a series of devastating car bomb attacks. The chief of US Central Command in Iraq said also said today that troops are losing ground against the insurgents on a daily basis. Yet, Dubya and Co. will not admit defeat. We're two months into the "troop surge" and it's done no good. Last week, a bomber blew himself up inside the parliament building in Baghdad. I don't know how many times I've said it here, but I'll keep saying: We need to get out of Iraq. Now!

Another example of political correctness run amok happened on, of all places, American Idol. After Chris Richardson and Simon Cowell got into heated exchange about Chris singing (badly) through his nose, Chris abruptly sent awkward condolences to the victims at Virginia Tech. The camera cut back to Simon who was caught rolling his eyes. The media went into a frenzy over this, saying Simon was disrespecting the victims. Simon was actually talking to Paula and didn't hear Chris' comment.

Speaking of Idol, Sanjaya was finally voted off tonight. He had been the object of hate, derision, homophobia and racism on a scale I'd never seen before. The vitriol aimed at this 17-year-old singing on a television show is just another indication of how fucked up so many people in this country really are.