thankfully, we are not saying “we told you so” about kathy sierra.
but we are sad to use the virginia tech massacre as an example of once again why markos was full of it in his recent dismissal of threats and stalking online.
the chitribe:
the suspected gunman in the virginia tech shooting rampage, cho seung-hui, was a troubled 23-year-old senior from south korea who investigators believe left an invective-filled note in his dorm room, sources say…
cho had shown recent signs of violent, aberrant behavior, according to an investigative source, including setting a fire in a dorm room and allegedly stalking some women…
= = more = =
professor carolyn rude, chairwoman of the university’s english department, said she did not personally know the gunman. but she said she spoke with lucinda roy, the department’s director of creative writing, who had cho in one of her classes and described him as “troubled.”
“there was some concern about him,” rude said. “sometimes, in creative writing, people reveal things and you never know if it’s creative or if they’re describing things, if they’re imagining things or just how real it might be. but we’re all alert to not ignore things like this.”
[emphasis ours]
we have no proof at this time (and we admit we may never) that cho harrassed anybody online.
update: now we do. the houstonchronicle:
in november and december 2005, two women complained to police that they had received calls and computer messages from cho, but they considered the messages “annoying,” not threatening, and neither pressed charges, chief wendell flinchum said.
granted, the women characterized the messages as “annoying” rather than threatening, but they did feel harrassed enough to go to the police about them.
and granted, “troubled” essays in a creative writing class is not the exact same thing as photoshopped pictures of women with their heads in a noose.
but we maintain that unfortunately for us all, the tragedy of of virginia tech is a terrible example of how unchecked misdirected anger can go horribly awry.
markos, you could be right. the guys harrassing kathy sierra might be too cowardly to actually act upon their anger.
sadly for the students, teachers and parents of those at virginia tech, sometimes somebody crosses the line, and takes out their anger on those around them.
the point we, and everyone else, has been making, markos, is simply this: it does little good to ignore the warning signs. in fact, it may be harmful to dismiss them.
we will never know if the virginia tech shootings could have been avoided. we do know that if there’s signs of a troubled personality noticed by someone, it warrants caution, attention and concern.
not dismissal.
*
I consider this message difficult but appropriate.
an appropriate “use” of a tragedy in reason is when people are denying the OBVIOUS… e.g. that warnings need to be ranked and prioritized by credibility, that dismissal of them all as “cranks” of the sort that don’t matter is ludicrous.
this is well known
it’s even “common sense” but has things going for it as well… and if such a thing is denies, one must use the most obvious aspects of reality to argue.
A fine example of the widely observed phenomenon which has been sweeping the intertubes like wildfire the last 30 hours – The senseless massacre at Virginia Tech basically confirms everything I’ve been saying all along.
gotta agree with you Chris. This seems like a low blow to me.
glad you said it.
I’ve stayed way out of the whole “orange vs everyone” thing but this isn’t right.
Respectfully, I disagree. Cho’s shooting spree reportedly had its genesis in anger over how he felt mistreated by a woman or women. It’s been reported he was stalking women in the weeks before this shooting.
It’s as fair a comparison to make as the one Larry Johnson made comparing the shooting to the horrors of Iraq.
Is Markos to blame for this incident? No, of course not. But violence against women is real. There are reasons why I’m scared to death about my daughter’s future in ways that I am not for my son. Attitudes that dismiss, deny or downplay those concerns enables the hatred that leads to such violence, imo.
I was thinking the same thing when I read that he was a stalker. I think it is relevant since Kos claimed such threats were unlikely to become real. It looks like in this case they came all too real in a very sad way. I don’t know who was killed in the dorm, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it was two women.
I believe one woman was killed and the male RA (resident hall assistant) who came to her aid.
because i tried to say what steven d said.
i never meant to imply that markos was responsible, nor that the two situations (kathy sierra and va. tech) were identical.
i merely point out that “stalking” and “acting out” can be (not necessarily will be) preludes to violence, and such actions should not be summarily dismissed, as markos did.
that’s all. anything else, the reader brought to my essay their own damn self.
My suggestion would be for you to remove this diary, do some thinking, and come back with a more articulate version of what you are trying to say here. I’m not a defender of Markos, but I think it’s creepy to link his name to this horrendous slaughter like he is even remotely to blame for it.
Oh for the love of Goddess, no one is saying that Kos caused the murders or that Kos condoned the murders. HeyZeus….it is just that Kos said that girls should have a thicker skin when it comes to threats and this guy threatened girls and then acted on it. There is a lesson to be learned. Threats to women, stalkers of women, etc. are bad and we should not brush them off as weak women who can’t handle the heat of the kitchen. Sheesh.
No one including me is saying that. I can read, yo.
Here’s what I did say….
“I think it’s creepy to link his name to this horrendous slaughter…”
And I’m quite familiar with the situation.
The assholes who stalk and threaten women, whether online or in real life; a fucking cultural Zeitgeist that laughs off such stalking behavior and is dismissive of those who have been on the receiving end of stalking/threats (and if Markos just happens to be part of that Zeitgeist that’s just too bad).
I myself have been stalked on the internet and even received death threats so I know how it feels.
I truly believe that if anyone threatens another in an over the top way that they should be subject to an investigation REGARDLESS of charges being brought. Just as in domestic violence this kind of threat can be view as unacceptable TO THE POINT that the person giving that threat (and here I am not talking about the casual wish that Bush would eat pretzel and the pretzel would work its magic, but the over-the-top threat WITH VISUALS should be viewed as serious.
I would take this thinking a step further.
Last August, at Virginia Tech, a gunman was on the loose and shot and killed a man. The university immediately went to shutdown until the killer was apprehended and the situation was stabilized.
Yesterday at 7:15 a.m., at the same university, a gunman shot and killed two people. The university did not immediately go to shutdown even though the killer was not in custody.
What was the difference in these two cases? Yesterday’s first shooting was considered “domestic.” It appeared to be a man killing a woman with whom, allegedly, he had an intimate relationship.
The university’s official statements yesterday were very clear about this. They chose not to shut down the university, not to make an immediate emergency announcement that a killer was on the loose, not to cancel classes or use the PA system or close the roads leading in and out of campus. One reason given for this decision was “the incident appeared to be domestic in nature.” (I’m quoting from memory; I’m sure most of you saw the same news story yesterday.)
Lesson: If a gunman kills a man and is on the loose, it’s an immediate public emergency b/c everyone is in danger. If a gunman kills a woman he allegedly has been intimately involved with, he’s barely a news blip. Intimate partner or domestic murder is pretty much normal, in other words.
This is how violence against women is too often regarded. Actual violence, blood spilled and bones broken and lives lost. Yes, dismissive attitudes definitely enable those who threaten women to attack and kill women. Yesterday, those same dismissive attitudes apparently were part of what enabled the killing of an extra 30 people.
The diarist sees the connections. Stephen D and I and surely many others see the connections. Why doesn’t everyone see them? That’s what baffles me.
got a link to the august incident? that gives incredible legitimacy to what i’m trying to say here.
http://wtop.com/?nid=25&sid=888012
Here are the key passages that illustrate my point:
“He overpowered a deputy and took his pistol. Shots were fired, killing hospital security guard Derrick McFarland, 26, as he tried to help the deputy.
“Police say Morva allegedly shot a police officer on the trail at about 7:30 a.m. Monday near the Blacksburg Public Library and police station.”
And:
“The manhunt for Morva prompted Virginia Tech to cancel classes — the first day of the fall semester — and lock down the campus.”
thanks, songbh!
IIRC, the August incident involved an escaped prisoner who had killed 2 police and was thought to be hiding somewhere on the VT campus. That is considerably different from what happened in this case. In the one case, there is a valid reason to assume that the escapee presented a danger across the campus and closing was justified. In yesterday’s incident, the first shooting appeared to be a personal affair between two students, with another student shot during the incident. There was absolutely no reason to believe that the killer was going to go somewhere else and kill more people.
In addition, to make this into something involving sexism is a real cheap shot. Do you honestly believe that if the killer had shot his roommate instead of his girlfriend, the campus police would have acted differently?
That’s exactly what I believe.
You’re astonished that I would “make this into something involving sexism.” Likewise, I am astonished that everyone does not see the connection between dismissive attitudes towards stalkers, the normalizing of violence against women, and the decision by authorities not to treat Monday’s killer on the loose the same way they treated last August’s killer on the loose.
August incident: a guy kills two people around 7 a.m. and flees. Classes are canceled and the campus is locked down until he is custody.
Monday incident: a guy kills two people around 7 a.m. and flees. Classes are not canceled and the campus is not locked down.
When questioned about that decision, an authority replies that the first shooting on Monday appeared to be domestic in nature. What could he POSSIBLY mean by that?
“Domestic in nature,” when applied to murder with a gun, is code for “a man killed his woman.”
When a man kills a sheriff’s deputy, he’s a dangerous madman on the loose and everyone is in danger. When a man kills his alleged intimate partner — even if he takes out a bystander as well! — he is not considered to be a threat to society in general.
songbh. Domestic violence is considered routine and requires no extraordinary measures, while other sorts of violence and threats require extraordinary measures.
So, let me get this straight. You believe that in the case of the escaped prisoner that had killed two police officers in separate instances and was suspected to be roaming the VT campus, the police said “Oh my, he killed a man! We better close the campus!” Then, in the mist recent case, the police said “Ah heck, he just killed some ‘ho’, no reason to close the campus. Let’s go get coffee.”
In the first case, there were logistical reasons to lock down the campus. There were strong reasons to believe that the escapee was holed up on the campus and a lockdown made the search easier and more effective. In the second case, the police had no reason to believe that the shooter was going to go somewhere else on campus and randomly start shooting people.
Suppose the first killing has taken place in an office building just outside the campus? Should they have closed the campus then?
One more point: If the situation had been reversed, if the shooter had been a woman who had just shot her boyfriend, IMHO, the actions of the campus police would have been the same.
When an armed robbery happens in the neighborhood of the elementary school where my sister teaches first grade, the school immediately goes to lockdown until the suspect is apprehended. She tells me this happens on a fairly regular basis.
When so much as a sighting of a person with a gun happened near my son’s daycare recently, the town police immediately notified all area schools so that they could go to lockdown for the safety of their students and staff.
A large university is a whole lot more complicated to shut down, but two bloodly corpses is also a whole lot more severe than an armed robbery or a gun sighting. They managed to get the word out and cancel classes that day in August. When asked why similar actions were not taken earlier on Monday morning, the official responding said that it was because the killings appeared to be domestic in nature.
Does that mean the police didn’t care about the dead woman and her dead friend? (“just some ‘ho, let’s go get coffee”?) No, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying the “domestic in nature” reaction was the cops fitting those first two murders into a cultural framework based on misogyny, which regards male-on-female-allegedly-intimate-partner murder as less abnormal and less of a public emergency than escaped-convict-kills-two-men murder.
You and others keep defending that decision not to lockdown the campus by saying the police had no reason to believe the killer would kill anyone else. Let’s ask the question: what permitted that assumption to seem reasonable at the time? Hint: It is something to do with that “domestic in nature” comment.
I am suggesting that the answer to that question will lead directly to insights regarding the way our society inteprets violence by men against women they consider to be theirs.
“When so much as a sighting of a person with a gun happened near my son’s daycare recently, the town police immediately notified all area schools so that they could go to lockdown for the safety of their students and staff.”
Where the heck do you live, Mayberry? Sorry, songbh, but I think you are full of crap.
In a thread about connections between cyber-threats and murder, you ask me to name where I live?
I’m disengaging from this discussion now.
ROTFLMAO!!
That was a rhetorical question. I would have thought that the “Mayberry” would have given you some inkling as to that.
You’re right…time to “disengage.”
Detroit Free Press
FYI
In the case of the escaped prisoner, “More than 24 agencies, including officers from the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, Virginia State Police and neighboring police departments, blanketed the campus and its surroundings”
You think they did that just cause the escapee killed a man rather than a woman?
the fact the cops went after the boyfriend of the woman Cho killed in the dorm appears to support your premise.
however, precedent indicates violent crimes against women are more often than not committed by boyfriends/husbands.
the BIG mistake the university and the cops made in this case was to assume this is always the case. five minutes of research would have shown Cho lived in the dorm– and already was on local law enforcement’s radar as a threat.
therefore Cho should have been quickly seen as a suspect.
instead the cops made an assumption, went after the wrong guy, and neglected to close/evacuate the university. this was a major mistake and will lead to major lawsuits against the university.
Respectfully, I disagree. The valid points that Skippy might like to highlight are undermined by this ghoulish post. What good comes out of making people, who otherwise agree with his criticism of the DailyKos, recoil at the piss poor taste that this person, Skippy, chose to exhibit here.
I spent my day at work reading about how the degenerate fucks who constitute the far right wing in this country are trying to turn the massacre into something about gun laws or something about teaching evolution in schools or something about abortion rights. Skippy turns it into something about Kos.
Jesus fucking Christ already, Fuck Kos. Give it up. Stop reading it. Don’t sign up and don’t read it. I never did, and if I’ve suffered ill effects from my lack of Daily Kos I haven’t discovered them. Fuck Daily Kos in all the sick ways that even the sickest and most depraved perverts couldn’t think up to fuck things and try to find a way to argue your point without making people, who generally agree with you, hate you and your shtick. Give it the fuck up. There are whole continents of ways to argue that the Kos’ bullshit on Kathy Sierra was for shit without becoming a ghoulish fuck.
Steven, I’m sorry to leave an expletive laden, disorganized diatribe in response to one of your comments, but it seemed like the logical place in the conversation to add my comments. My disgust is with skippy.
I wasn’t offended. I’m thinking over my own involvement with DKos right now, btw. Not sure yet if I will continue to post there, though if I do, I won’t be posting any GBCW stuff about it.
i’m not trying to use the tragedy to make points.
but it’s like how the gun enthusiasts would deride gun control advocates for “using” the columbine tragedy to advance their cause.
i’m not pleased that the va tech massacre happened.
but it’s so incredibly on point about what kos has been denying about harrassment of people possibly leading to tragedy, i felt the need to make the analysis.
sorry if i seemed unfeeling. i certainly thought that i made the points in my essay that i felt it was tragic, and not entirely identical but relevant to the points kos was purposely avoiding.
“i’m not trying to use the tragedy to make points.”
You are using the tragedy to make points. Your effort is really besides the point, but I’ll certainly take your word that you weren’t trying. An effortless use of tragedy it is. Hurray!
“if i am guilty of anything, perhaps it’s bad timing.”
Pretty much.
i am not using tragedy to make points.
i am saying that this tragedy is a terrible example of how dismissing threats (as kos implied) leads to tragedy.
but i’ve said this before. you’re not going to concede, and neither will i.
i stand by my position.
you’re not going to concede, and neither will i
Convince me and I will. I’m not an unreasonable person unwilling to concede a point. Writing that you are “not using tragedy to make points” in comments to a post where you, in my mind, seem to be specifically using a tragedy to make points seems a tough climb, though I’ve often been called a fool.
i didn’t “turn it into something” against kos.
in my mind, i honestly feel it’s legitimately connected.
kos dismisses threats against a woman by people who are acting out their anger.
more and more evidence is showing up that cho was also acting out his anger, and look what happened.
i’m not saying one necessarily follows the other.
but there are definate similarities, and i think i made a legitimate position.
it’s not comfortable talking about men killing women.
especially if it really happened, and recently.
if i am guilty of anything, perhaps it’s bad timing.
but it’s not like i used the va. tech tragedy to rail about kos dumping me off his blogroll, or not allowing 9/11 conspiracy theories to be discussed.
i’m sorry if i offended you, but i stand by my work.
and i apologize to armando for calling him an enabler.
“i didn’t “turn it into something” against kos.”
I disagree.
“and i apologize to armando for calling him an enabler.”
Glad to hear it. The ninth step is an important part of recovery, but I have no idea what the fuck you are talking about here. Fake it till you make it brother.
“i’m sorry if i offended you, but i stand by my work.”
No if about it. You offended me. I’m rarely bothered or disturbed by anything, but this post really did disturb me. I can’t put my finger on it, but something about writing seriously about the bullshit cartoon nightmare that is Daily Kos in the context of a mass murder just doesn’t sit right. Whatever. Skippy, I’m sorry, but you really lost me on this one.
indeed? let’s see:
starting with the title…*dear markos:…*pretty damn clear from that reading that that;s exactly what you did.
l do not doubt your sincerity about this issue, but imo, what chris is pointing out, and seems to be getting lost in the dialog, is that this was a cheap shot.
no one here has derided your concerns, which are shared by all, if l may be so bold. but this smacks of vindictiveness….bordering on vendetta, especially in light of this:
“but it’s not like i used the va. tech tragedy to rail about kos dumping me off his blogroll, or not allowing 9/11 conspiracy theories to be discussed.”
there are certainly points to be made here regarding the underlying issues, but kos isn’t one of them.
this is in no way a defense of kos’ actions/statements regarding any of this, but, with all due respect, stop digging, you already need a ladder.
Chris, I love pandas. But Skippy has a point, a damn good point. Maybe you missed the big brouhaha, but basically Kos blew off a woman’s fear over highly graphic images of her death. Kos said she was whiny and should STFU. Kos never apologized.
Here is a case where stalking of a woman by a man may have been a motivating factor and I would be surprised to hear that he had a thing for the woman he killed initially. In fact, he may have continued his rampage because he knew after the first attack that this was his last chance to get back.
To point it out to Kos that this may well be another example of violence against women that he so summarily dismissed is both reasonable and eloquent. Skippy is not using the tragedy in a bad way, he is showing how Kos just doesn’t see that women are stalked, raped, and killed, daily. He does not condone the attack, he shows how it fits into our recent discussions. I don’t see Kos saying he was wrong and that he apologizes for belittling a victim of stalking.
Kamakhya, sadly I didn’t miss as much of the big brouhaha I might have liked. I agree completely that Kos’ remarks on the subject were for shit and that he deserves as much ridicule as we can muster. His site should have died a few years ago, and maybe (though doubtfully) now it will. My problem here is specifically with Skippy’s ghoulish post and Skippy’s ghoulish post alone.
I just don’t see the post as ghoulish. I see it as using a real event as an example of why his post was an egregious disregard of what happens when we disregard undue attention to women. It was on point without distracting from the tragedy that VT is.
It’s ghoulish to point out that there’s a war on women, that that war just claimed a bunch more lives, and that even the “good guys” contribute to that war?
No, not at all. But that’s not the post skippy wrote.
it is coming out that indeed cho had an argument the day before with the woman who was his first victim.
it’s not ghoulish to examine tragedies and why they occur in an attempt to understand, and hopefully, prevent future occurrences.
it’s ghoulish to enjoy such. and i specifically stated at the beginning that i take no joy in pointing this out.
I gotta say, skip, that I agree with pretty much everything Chris has to say about this post. I’m not as hostile to Daily Kos as Chris is, but his advice is solid. Let it go. There is no universe where it is appropriate to use the tragedy in Virginia Tech to call out Markos for his dumbass post on Kathy Sierra.
I agree about the violence towards women being real, and it is a very important issue.
And I have no stake in this fight against markos either – if it was anyone else on the receiving end for so long by so many for a stupid and wrong point I would say the same thing.
But this isn’t about markos. I believe that TheManWithNoPoint had a diary railing against those who used this to make a point about gun control, or about anything else. Especially so soon.
I don’t see how this is different.
there is such a thing as going too far
there is an epidemic of violence against women in our nation. women who are stalked and killed barely register a blip in the media or even at many progressive places. it happens all the time, and in the VT case, it was the flashpoint for a horrible explosion of violence. not every stalker is a murderer, but the potential for them to be is real and not insignificant. i don’t understand why people have a hard time understanding that part of the problem is that some people want to dismiss the threats of violence as insignificant. they’re aren’t always, as monday proved. being dismissive about violence against women contributes to conditions where that violence flourishes.
If skippy’s point is valid then someone can come right back at him by pointing to the Duke rape case and say that women are just as likely to be lying bitches.
As Chris points out Skippy could have made the same argument using, you know, statistics instead of abusing the corpses of students to further a blog-war.
Argument by catastrophic event has led to poor results in recent years. Maybe this sort of thing should be stopped in its tracks.
And yeah, Kos was not very understanding. Not a surprise AFAIK.
If skippy’s point is valid then someone can come right back at him by pointing to the Duke rape case and say that women are just as likely to be lying bitches.
i’m sorry, i don’t quite follow your logic. some women lie, as do men. what does this have to do with what skippy is saying?
As Chris points out Skippy could have made the same argument using, you know, statistics instead of abusing the corpses of students to further a blog-war.
but this did get attention, didn’t it? this is the blogosphere, and people play rough. as for statistics, well, every time i put up a post with lots of long, detailed boring statistics about violence against women, i get 0 comments and few clickthrus. people don’t read that stuff very often.
and i don’t take this post to be “furthering a blog war” i take it as continuing an important discussion about violence against women, made more important by monday’s events. kos is an important progressive leader, what he says matters, and it’s right to point out when he makes a mistake. i believe he made a mistake by downplaying death threats. you seem to as well.
Argument by catastrophic event has led to poor results in recent years. Maybe this sort of thing should be stopped in its tracks.
agreed on the “poor results” part, but cf my previous point about how no one reads those long, boring statistics posts. further, i get real crap from some of my readers when i post on one women’s murder and make statements like “it’s an endemic problem and not enough people are talking about it.” i’m told that “guilt won’t work” and that i shouldn’t confuse progressive men with misogynists. i don’t, but i also believe that there is misogyny in the progressive community, of a milder form, and that kos represents some of that.
misogyny kills. it’s really that simple to me. that’s why i can’t dismiss it, even when it’s “trivial.”
to me, the point isn’t really whether or not you can hammer out the nugget of a valid point from this diary. You can. The point is whether or not it is in good taste to take an ongoing jihad against Daily Kos (which skippy has been waging on several fronts), and include this tragedy into the overall effort. I can’t take this post in isolation from the others. This, for me, is in extremely bad taste. That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have any validity at all. Different point.
but this did get attention, didn’t it? this is the blogosphere, and people play rough. as for statistics, well, every time i put up a post with lots of long, detailed boring statistics about violence against women, i get 0 comments and few clickthrus. people don’t read that stuff very often.
I don’t know if this diary is in “good taste.” But I can say that I was far more offended by Kos’s front page post. I am guessing that there is a strong correlation between gender and whether this diary is considered to be over the top or in bad taste. I feel that Kos has been far less dissed than Kathy Sierra was, by him.
Hi, I’m RB’s sock-puppet.
i’m sorry, i don’t quite follow your logic. some women lie, as do men. what does this have to do with what skippy is saying?
Skippy is taking an incident and saying AHA! It’s true! It’s depressing in that argument-by-single-incident was, to me anyway, the hallmark of the Reagan era. You know, one Pernicious Thing A Poor Person Did Represents All. The Duke case was the same from the get-go to now, and the VT incident is the same for right and left. It’s essentially poor reasoning and poorer taste at the moment.
but this did get attention, didn’t it? this is the blogosphere, and people play rough. as for statistics, well, every time i put up a post with lots of long, detailed boring statistics about violence against women, i get 0 comments and few clickthrus. people don’t read that stuff very often.
I’m glad you put that stuff up, and thanks for it.
and i don’t take this post to be “furthering a blog war” i take it as continuing an important discussion about violence against women, made more important by monday’s events.
You’re right, that was ill-put. Kos has been and will be a jerk. I don’t read him in general. I’m snipping the rest of your bit because I pretty much agree with all of it except in the “this specific incident as tool to beat with”.
someone can come right back at him by pointing to the Duke rape case and say that women are just as likely to be lying bitches
I suppose someone could make that point, but that someone would be and idiot. Because a number of the the threats against Kathy Sierra were on a website. They are documented. Kos was just too lazy to do his research before he obliquely accused Sierra of lying.
So tell me. Is a man falsely accused of rape every six minutes? Because a woman or girl is raped every six minutes. Most are not reported at all.
I suppose someone could make that point, but that someone would be and idiot.
Sure. An idiot runs the country.
lying bitches don’t commit mass murder.
Just because someone telegraphs their rage and their intent, does not mean they won’t, in fact, act out on it. For Markos to dismiss the threats made against Kathy Sierra was arrogant. I hope he, in fact, took the threats against his own family more seriously.
Ask Selena or Rebecca Schaeffer if anti-fans don’t escalate to assault. Oh right. You can’t. Because they’re dead.
I was known until recently as tbrucegodfrey over at the House of Orange and have made my exceptions to the Duke of Orange’s approach to recent issues abundantly known in a multitude of fora. No need to rehash.
But the bodies are barely cold. Everyone from gun supporters to gun enthusiasts to anti-atheist activists to opponents of same-sex dorms to anti-gay religious fanatics are using these dead bodies and their wounded former colleagues. Already, families of the same general ethnic background of the killer living in northern Virginia are very frightened for their safety due to potential racist backlash. (VT is in southwestern Virginia but the killer and a number of the victims had roots in the Virginia DC suburbs, a few subway stops from where I am typing now.)
I do not want to step into a meta-argument between experienced established members of this community – where I am still new – but would encourage all of us not to think about Kos and his (or my) legion of moral flaws, but rather about the moral heroism of Liviu Librescu, the prominent VT engineering professor survivor of both Nazi Germany’s concentration camps and Communist Romania under Ceaucescu’s hideous brutality, who put himself between the killer and his students so they could escape.
I am not Jewish, am indeed not even religious. But out of the deepest respect of the heroism of Professor Librescu, I offer the English version of the Jewish mourners’ prayer, the Kaddish:
HAT TIP to commentor GLant at Virginia progressive ally Raising Kaine.
I’ve taught in college classrooms and will soon do so again. Along with every academic I’ve spoken with this week, I am profoundly moved by Prof. Librescu’s heroic actions. He laid down his life for his students, and he did it instinctually. I can only hope that I would have done the same for mine.
I spent Monday afternoon on a large university campus trying to work. Everywhere I went, I found myself counting off groups of thirty-two bright, beautiful, laughing students and closing my eyes against the horrific image of all of them suddenly dead. My heart is breaking at the thought of so many young, promising, innocent lives suddenly gone.
I hope we will keep some room in our discourse here for the possibility of multiple and simultaneous reactions to this tragedy. I’m posting about sexism and violence against women, and at the same time, I am honoring the heroism of Prof. Librescu and many others. I am grieving and raging and talking through my own fears with family and friends. It’s not either-or. We can do, feel, say, and write many things at once.
it’s not about my supposed “war against kos,” of which there is none, any more than i have a war against bush.
i disagree w/kos about some things. it’s not a war.
(maybe you guys can only disagree w/people that you have wars with. not me. i’m an adult. please don’t project onto me.)
one of the worst of markos’ positions that i disagree with is his recent “dismissal” of harrassment of women as a sort of “if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen” thing.
then, three days later, a terrible, horrible tragedy which is beginning more and more to look like it stems from harrassment of women happens.
it’s ridiculous to accuse me of ghoulishness because i point out that this terrible tragedy is an example of what can come from dismissal of harrasment of women. and because kos’ such dismissal is fresh on everyone’s mind, it’s legitimate for me to make the connection.
(google “virginia tech” and “stalking.” then tell me i have no legitimate position to make a connection between markos’ dismissal of online stalking and the va. tech tragedy).
sorry if this offends you all, but i would posit that it’s in your own minds, refusing to admit the connections.
markos’ callousness towards women and the harrassment thereof is the offensive part of this argument. not the fact that i point out that harrassment and violence are similar parts of the same, terrible, tragic tragectory.
look, we all dislike right wing pundits, right?
right wing pundits say “iraq is going well.”
hundreds of people die in attacks daily in iraq.
are you telling me it’s ghoulish to hold those pundits accountable for their position in light of reality?
come on, guys! if i’m so out of line, why is this diary recommneded?
why are there at least as many people defending my position as those of you offended by it?
i am forced to revisit my “armando-12 step diary” and bring up eldrigde cleaver here:
“if you aren’t part of the solution you are part of the problem.”
refusing to acknowledge that violence against women, be it verbal, harrassing, or stalking, can lead to tragedy is part of why such violence continues in 21st century america.
real, tangible, horrible mind-numbing tragedy can and did evolve from such refusal.
i point it out.
dont’ frickin’ kill the messenger here.
I find attacks like this one more irrational than rational, more destructive than constructive, and more mythical than actual. I’ve seen too many attacks against the mythical Kos, and what Kos seems to represent to these people than actual rational engagements to the things that Kos says.
I agree that Kos was being boneheaded on the Kathy Sierra case. But, guess what, I agree with Kos about the innaneness of a `blogger code of ethics’.
The best take on the Kos-Sierra controversy that I’ve read was by Joan Walsh, and it is my hope that we can all learn to grow up.
Nobody “ignor(ed) the warning signs”.
This person was reported to the police and school counselors by both faculty at the school and his own parents. He was apparently being treated for depression as well.
This young man warranted caution (the teacher that tutored him developed a code word signal for her assistant to call the police if she felt threatened), attention (his professors consulted mental health services at VT), and concern (his parents did the same and he was being treated).
He was an adult and no matter how concerned one is, the troubled person cannot be held against his will except under specific circumstances. Unfortunately, apparentl the first time he could have been held in custody was when he killed the two people in the dorm.
If you have a solution for holding a law abiding adult against their will before they commit a crime, then please let us know how that is accomplished.
there are those purposefully twisting what Markos said to pursue their own agenda.
Markos statement had nothing to do with the fact that the blogger was a woman. It was all about someone on the blogosphere saying the crazy emails they might get is reason to have a “code of ethics”.
If the person making the statement was a man, he would have said the same thing. The sex of the person saying it was irrelevant. Go read what Kos wrote again. There isn’t any mention of the fact that she’s a woman, or making fun of her because she’s a woman, or anything. It’s all gender neutral.
All he said is crazy people send crazy emails sometimes, and that’s not a reason for a blogger ethics code.
The crux of the Kos-haters is that “but she was a woman, you have to treat her differently”! Isn’t that what you all are saying? I thought we were trying to get rid of treating women as “helpless, protection-needing” people.
Did you post this at DailyKos?
The “gender-neutral” argument is itself the problem here.
Cyberviolence is NOT gender-neutral. Women bloggers receive harassment and threats that are vastly more in number and worse in intensity than male bloggers do.
Pointing this out does not say that women are helpless. Pointing this out says that women are disproportionately and unfairly victimized on the basis of their gender.
Male bloggers, prominent or otherwise, are part of the problem of cyberviolence when they refuse to see or acknowledge this reality.
but with all due respect, so what if it was “gender neutral” or not? (and i’m not granting you that what markos said was gender neutral. you can’t talk about a woman getting harrassed and not talk about the harrassment of women, just as you can’t talk about a black person getting discriminated against and not talk about discrimination against black people).
even if he was gender neutral, so what? he dismissed the online harrassment of someone with a “but so what? it’s not as if those cowards will actually act on their threats.”
someone did. not five days after kos said that online harrassment is no big deal.
that is my original point. markos, the de facto leader of liberal blogs; writer, founder, and administrator of the second biggest liberal blog online (and formerly the biggest, and surely the most well-known) made an incredibly anti-liberal statement which all too tragically proved to be completely wrong a few days later.
and most progressive women (as well as myself, chris clarke, steven d here, norwegianity and some other guys too numerous for me to remember right off the top of my head) correctly, in my opinion, pointed out that dismissal of threats agains a woman is part of the inbred institutionalized misogyny that allows erruptions of violence to continue.
second biggest? Who’s bigger?
i believe huffpo has surpassed dkos by now.
i could be wrong. i was wrong once before.
I believe you are correct.
Now kos is the least read contributor (at least, by the left… lol) at the second largest “progressive” blog. Technocratie has Huffpo at 18, dkos at 26.
I don’t see how that right wing kook is considered A list, given his political statements, by anyone in the left?
… which all too tragically proved to be completely wrong a few days later.
Kathy Sierra was killed at Vtech, along with 31 other women? And a Blog Code of Ethics could have stopped Cho? I didn’t know! If only Kos hadn’t written that, so many lives could have been spared.
I also didn’t know that Kos was my de facto leader. Man, the stuff I learn here.
It is not about a code of conduct. It is about dismissing a threat to a woman. Further, if you want to take out the woman part, it is a threat to another blogger. I would feel just as outraged if it had been against a man. These things are serious, and have to be taken as such.
BTW I am not a Kos hater. If anything, I am a Kos ignorer, until he makes such remarks. And, you have to take Kos’ history of ignoring women issues.
at least this diary getting comments almost as long as as markos’ original dismissal of kathy sierra diary.
i never expected the spanish inquisition!
the Spanish Inquisition.
might have reason to be concerned, though.
Surely, VTech proves Kos hates women.
That Philadelphia had snow three days ago proves Algore is FAT.
That Atrios isn’t talking about the islamofascist bombings in southwest France proves liberals hate America.
Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
this diary is about to fall off the recommended list, so i will reiterate my position clearly one last time:
markos dismissed, ignored, diminished or otherwise lessened the graphic representations of hate speech, stalking and harrassment towards kathy sierra, characterizing them as simply “stupid” and “a little heat in the email inbox.”
five days later, the worst school massacre in us history took place, perpetrated by an obviously mentally ill man.
said man demonstrated behavior which was similar, tho by no means identical, to the sort of thing kathy sierra was experiencing.
i pointed that out.
i never said markos was in any responsible, thru either his actions or inactions, to the tragedy.
i never dismissed the weight of the tragedy on the community, the people or families involved, or the nation as a whole.
i never said anyone “ignored” the behavior of cho, nor did i make a connection between markos’ ignoring of ms. sierra and the active participation of cho in the massacre.
i only point out that misogyny, in varying degrees, is not only rampant, but literally often fatal, and should not be dismissed as mere school-yard taunting.
this, i hope, is the last i will have to reiterate my position.
to those of you, many of whom i admire greatly, who were offended by my post, either thru my poorly-constructed syntax of ideas, or your own projections of what i said, i am sorry.
but i stand by my position.
Like I said elsewhere, it’s not like we can’t take a nugget of a point out of this diary. We can.
The problem is a matter of tact and appropriateness.
I don’t think that tacking this tragedy to Markos, in any way, is an appropriate thing to do.
It really is a way of using the tragedy to say, ‘this proves what I was saying all along’.
You’ve been railing against Markos ever since the blogroll purge. And that’s your right.
Your point seems to be that misogyny should be taken seriously and that threats and stalking should be taken seriously. And Markos didn’t take them seriously. I can your point.
But it is still a cheap shot. We all already knew that stalkers sometimes turn violent and that threats sometimes turn into deeds. This tragedy didn’t prove that, it just provided one more example of it happening.
I’m very disappointed in Markos’s reaction and failure to acknowledge that he didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about. But I think your attack is way over the top.