It’s worth noting…

At Fenway Park, when some drunken fuck from Southie feels like climbing down onto right field and running around like a retard during the Sox game, the camera crews make a point of turning their cameras away from them, not only to not reward their behavior but also to discourage anyone else from doing it.

When a greasy-headed Korean with a chip on his shoulder decides to gun down thirty-two of his schoolmates because of some perceived slight against him before mercifully eating a bullet and sparing the legal system years of headaches, NBC decides the best way to address the situation is to broadcast his “multi-media manifesto” on the 6pm newscast (complete with their logo stamped all over it), playing right into his hands and further mystifying this douche bag like he’s Kevin Spacey in Se7en or something. This stunted malcontent should be ridiculed as the pizza-faced, Napoleon Dynamite-sounding ass hat that he is (Opie & Anthony acting out his truly horrid plays is a nice place to start), and yet there he is, all over the cable news programs 24-7 with his post-Columbine dress-code and guns held sideways like a Chuck Bronson poster.

All this from the same cowardly network which fired Don Imus last week for making an ill-timed and off-color joke about the Rutgers women’s basketball team. What a disgusting little chapter in recent history and one I hope media studies classes return to in years to come, simply to watch the semantics line being walked by hypocrites like Al “Tawana Brawley” Sharpton and Snoop Dogg, who reminded us that when they use “nappy-headed ho” it means something different than when Imus does (this is made all the more sickening when you realize Imus’ only familiarity with the expression probably came from hearing African American men using the “term of endearment.”) Over and over we heard how these fine, outstanding young women who have reached the pinnacle of sports (too bad they lost the championship, huh?) were “scarred for life” because a saggy-faced, senior-citizen radio personality who holds no influence in their world had called them ho’s. Never mind the fact that many of these women no doubt have songs on their ipods which use this same colloquialism, or words to the same effect, there are press conferences to be held and books to be written.

But what about the friends and families of the dead Virginia Tech students or those wounded who survived? These are people whose lives have literally been ruined by a hateful act, not a lousy joke about the hair styles of black women. Aren’t they being scarred by seeing this scumbag being given a public forum for his incoherent ranting which places the blame for the massacre squarely on the victims? Not only have they lost their loved ones but they’re being lectured to by the killer? Where’s the inflated sense of moral fortitude from NBC on this one?

Furthermore, in seeing that these random acts of violence will gain media attention, broadcasting their shitty YouTube rants all over the airwaves, NBC has given the greenlight to every asshole with an assault weapon to “martyr” themselves for their cause. In the past two days there’s been a self-immolation in Long Beach and a mad gunman at NASA in Texas, no doubt innervated by the fallout in the wake of Virginia Tech. NBC had a chance to let this man-child drift away into obscurity and instead they gave him a forum and in the words of a VT survivor “rubbed salt in their wounds.” But there you go, thank God he didn’t call anyone a “nappy-headed ho” otherwise the whole thing would have been tasteless.