Wednesday April 18, 2007

GUNS DON'T KILL PEOPLE -- WORDS AND PICTURES DO! Crunchy Rod Dreher finds the real Virginia Tech culprit:

This is what you get too from a society that tolerates all manner of lurid, explicit violence in its visual art, and forbids nothing except the impulse to forbid. I don't think for a minute that everyone who watches slasher films, or who plays violent video games, or who reads sadistic novels, or who listens to violent music, will turn out to be Klebold, Harris or Cho. Clearly that's not the case, and it would be stupid to claim that. But... no taboos... nihilistic... culture of death... moral imagination... gurgle...

When his commenters are less than respectful, Dreher says, "Do I really have to explain that I don't think Goya or Shakespeare are the same thing as Nine Inch Nails or the collected works of Cho Seung-Hui -- even though they all depict violence in their work?" Watch out, Trent -- God-Boy's a-gunnin' fer ya! Even the love of a few other wingnuts won't protect you from his fully-engaged moral imagination!

Since ten seconds after the VT massacre, every conservative in existence has jumped to inform us that whatever else we may think about it, we must not blame guns. But, boy, are they concerned about ink and pixels! The very idea that NBC might publish some of Cho's ravings has them flipping out.

It says something about their reasoning that they think we can handle semi-automatic weapons, but not words and pictures.

UPDATE. MSNBC is running the Collected Works of Psychonerd:

You had everything you wanted. Your Mercedes wasn’t enough, you brats. Your golden necklaces weren’t enough, you snobs. Your trust fund wasn’t enough. Your vodka and Cognac weren’t enough. All your debaucheries weren’t enough. Those weren’t enough to fulfill your hedonistic needs. You had everything.

I'll be durned! Cho Seung-Hui was a Crunchy Con!

Oh, and folks? If you're forced to commit mass murder now, please don't tell anyone where you read this.