Politicizing Bad News

Over at The CA, there are several threads regarding politics and the Virginia Tech murders.

Roch, Fec, and Hoggard take Sam to task for being "the first to politicize" the event.

I have news for you three: From past experience, he knew that the first people to politicize this would not be Republicans and Conservatives.

Sam was making a prediction based upon this knowledge. So far, at least several of the elements he included have come to pass.

He's been proven right on those elements.

Meanwhile, I found this to be right on target.

Noteworthy:

"Still, I do think that the rush to draw gun-control conclusions from the Virginia Tech murders is unfortunate, for two reasons. First, it is unseemly. While this or any other tragedy can be a legitimate topic of political discussion, having that discussion while the bodies are still being carried out of the building conveys an impression of trying to capitalize on the emotion of the moment. Second, we don't know the facts of this case yet.

Thus, when the New York Times leaps into the breach to assert, 'What is needed, urgently, is stronger controls over the lethal weapons that cause such wasteful carnage and such unbearable loss,' its conclusion is negated by its own admission that:

'Not much is known about the gunman, who killed himself, or
about his motives or how he got his weapons, so it is
premature to draw too many lessons from this tragedy.'"

Indeed it is.

Once again the post by Podhoretz I linked to at Sam's is still appropriate:

"The effort to shoehorn an event as devastating as this one into a predetermined set of ideas — like the need for gun control, or the need for the abolition of all gun controls — is an effort to make the unthinkable thinkable. Does this massacre seem to be utterly without cause? Well, then, we will find a cause in order to be able to wrap our minds around it, because when we have a cause we can determine a remedy. (I can sense a certain measure of disappointment emanating from some quarters that the shooter, may he reside forever in Hell, wasn't an illegal alien.) We can pass a law, or teach new kinds of classes to people, or produce anodyne television specials and heartwarming television commercials that will serve to vaccinate America against the next monstrous act of senseless evil."

UPDATE:

I've been thinking and reading about the murders all day now, and I've discovered a personal connection.

One of the victims was Mary Karen Read, a freshman from Annandale VA, and a graduate of my alma mater, Annandale High School.

Those are not unusual facts for a Virginia Tech student. Annandale High has sent many thousands of its grads to Blacksburg in the 50+ years of it's operations. More than a dozen of my friends went there, and I spent a lot of time on the campus in the 60s.

If it had not been for my desire to go to a small liberal arts school (Lynchburg College), I probably would have gone there too.