I heard it on the radio while I was in my minivan on the way to drop The Babster off at preschool. She was upset because she’d packed her “back pack” full of goodies she wanted to bring (mostly food low enough on the shelves for her little hands to swipe) but couldn’t find when it was time to go.
“Emma, you don’t need your food backpack. Miss Jennifer makes all your food in the kitchen at school, honey.”
“But I want it! I want my backpack!!” she wailed, tiny tears streaming down her impossibly tiny face, her mouth formed in a sideways oval, her tongue vibrating against her tonsils.
Then I heard it. A gunman went into an elementary school and killed 27 people, most of them children. Last I heard there is an entire kindergarten class unaccounted for. I gasped. Did I just hear Bill Handel say “elementary school,” like, with young kids, like…babies? Killed?
I looked at the rear view mirror at my whining baby, and my heart dropped. Some parent got into their mini van today and dropped their child off at that soon-to-be infamous school, just like every other Friday. That parent might have thought, “It’s only 11 days until Christmas. I’ll drop little “Jayden” or “Kylie” off at kindergarten and then do some shopping, maybe swing to the post office and send off those Christmas cards. And then while they were shopping at Macy’s or Toy R’ Us, they get the call that would change Christmas for them forever.
The radio announcer said there’s footage of little children walking out of the school single file, each with their hands on the shoulders of the child in front of them. They weren’t just crying. They were screaming. Children, screaming in terror and grief.
I called my mother-in-law, who lives just a half hour away from the mass-murder site to see if she might have more details on who might have done such a vile and evil thing. Her sound blew out on the big screen television that was blaring little swipes of information in their news reports. I wanted to know who this “person” might be, this evil entity would could be so soulless as to go into an elementary school full of babies and systematically take them out of this world, just 11 days before they were supposed to run downstairs in their little pajamas with the feet, slip along the wood floor to the Christmas tree to all the presents that would await them.
I speculated about who this evil person might be, some mental patient that fell through the cracks with a father in New Jersey who made excuses for his son’s psychosis. I wondered if the future reports will show that some psychiatrist made a recommendation that the shooter be hospitalized but perhaps there was no money, no resources.
I hear the shooter is dead, and I’m not glad. I want him to be alive so he can be dragged through the streets. Guys like these need medieval justice. When the craziest amongst us kills the most innocent amongst us, I have to wonder, just how much good will towards men we have left in this world.
Can't tell you how sickened and upset I am about this incident...there are so many things that upset me.
1. The sheer sadism of it.
2. The fact that this killer apparently has Asperger's, which I have. He's the poster boy for my condition. Terrific. I have news for the media...Aspergians are not all psychotic killers.
3. If the cops had not responded so quickly, HUNDREDS of kids would be dead.
4. The teachers showed courage in this crisis that goes above and beyond the core values of teaching. They deserve medals. The only term I can use for them is "samurai." Real samurai, not the twisted value the Japanese used in World War II.
5. As a guy who is a journalist for 32 years, I am hoping that the media covering this horror show some bloody compassion, humanity, and common sense, and don't just view this as the "ultimate reality show." Instead of having 20 combustible Yuppies competing for glory, a high-paying job, or a spouse, they have 27,000 people of all ages, from the town wino to its mayor, having emotional meltdowns in front of the entire nation. So I'm sure the media will just shove microphones and cameras in the faces of these families and ask them what they think about Wayne LaPierre's statements on gun control or Kim Kardashian's pregnancy...anything to get that exclusive ahead of the competition.
6. The fact that these families are going to spend the rest of eternity staring at empty chairs, silent rooms, and unwrapped Christmas presents, remembering everything that was, everything that is, and everything that will never be again.
7. The fact that this country will NEVER, EVER, have a sober, sane, sensible gun policy. The handgun manufacturers and the NRA are too powerful. Too many of their supporters are seriously paranoid about other ethnicities, their own government, and "socialists," and seriously think that their basement arsenal of assault rifles is the only thing that will save America from the "enemy" imposing a tyranny upon them, based on the BIlderbergers, the UN, black helicopters, the Tri-Lateralists, the Freemasons, the Jews, the Muslims, and blacks (of course).
8. All that government will do after this is offer up some bills that will get shot down in Congress, wring its hands, make statements, and move on.
9. People will find scapegoats to blame: the NRA has blamed this whole fiasco on Hollywood and video games. Right. There was no mass murder before video games. Forget about two unimaginably bloody world wars, the Crusades, the Inquisition, the massacre of the Armenians, the Middle Passage, the slave trade, the Belgians in the Congo, the Russian Gulags, the Holocaust, and the killing fields in Cambodia. None of this happened until we had video games. And violent movies did it...wasn't "Gone With the Wind" violent? "Sands of Iwo Jima?" "The Longest Day?" Hollywood has been doing violent movies since "The Great Train Robbery." Always a scapegoat.
10. Finally, the coldest fact of all...sitting in some basement somewhere, surrounded by more firepower than 41st Royal Marine Commando, is some disaffected person, wreathed in paranoia, sitting in front of his computer, heated up by a combination of his own inner demons, failures in life, and conspiracy theory rhetoric on the internet, convinced that he is the only man standing in the gap against villainous enemies that are threatening to bring down Western civilization. Convinced that he has to make a dramatic gesture to bring the "sheeple" to their feet and rising to the "cause," as well as so filled with despair at his own failures that he wants to go out with a bang, he will decide to end his deserved obscurity and existence by writing his name in the history books as the perpetrator of a massacre that will break the records and horror set in Connecticut...and he will go forth, armed to the teeth, commit an even greater act of butchery, die at his own hands of those of the police, and achieve his goal....to be remembered forever.
We can name them all:
Charles Whitman
James Huberty
David Berkowitz
John Wayne Gacy
Richard Speck
Ted Bundy
Jeffrey Dahmer
David Muhammed
Bonnie Parker
Clyde Barrow
Jack the Ripper
Aileen Wuornos
All of these killers, and more, are permanently inscribed on the national psyche. Many of us can rattle off the details of their crimes...Huberty attacking a Jewish temple...Richard Speck and the nurses...John Wayne Gacy and the clown suit...Muhammed and his sniper's roost in the trunk of his car...Whitman in the college tower...Dahmer the cannibal...and so on. They are all remembered, in immense detail. Studied. Reviewed. Subjects of movies and TV shows.
Now, here's the hard part.
Name their victims.
So you can see how upset and devastated I am.
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