Shots in the Dark

8 Responses

• Anonymous
  4/16/2007 11:39 am

  Many Crimson editorials say only the following:

  “Hi, we’re the Crimson Ed Board! Like most post-adolescents aware of authority over some group of peers, we find ourselves and our sharp minds relevant to everything that happens anywhere. This is normal.

  “We assert our relevance by writing in a way that implies that everything is relevant to us, even if we cannot articulate its relevance to the community we serve.

  “We read the national papers so you don’t have to.

  “Deplorable things are to be deplored.

  “If we fail to comment on something that’s in the national news, that might suggest that our opinion has no more merit than anyone else’s — and might hint that indeed, it sometimes has considerably less, since it emerges as a thin brew from a meeting of up to 30 people who say a lot of things, then vote, then pass on to their dimmest and most junior member (unless it’s an issue people actually care about) the task of writing up the discussion.

  “So here’s our two cents’ worth of recapitulating the obvious; since we discussed this as a group, our version of it has become more interesting than a News Department’s version of it.

  “It has been our pleasure to serve you, and we look forward to your joining us in the future as well as we continue to posit that Harvard is the center of the public-policy and academic universe, and that things that do not touch it are inevitably caressed, to no effect, by its tendrils of moral evaluation.”

  Standing Eagle

• eadw
  4/16/2007 11:42 am

  My favorite Crimson editorial was when they started instructing General Musharraf on what “he needed to do” in Pakistan…

• Anonymous
  4/16/2007 1:52 pm

  Actually, SE, it’s about 10-15 people, who pretty much agree on everything.

• Anonymous
  4/16/2007 2:12 pm

  Maybe we can have a haiku contest to explain it.

• Anonymous
  4/16/2007 2:33 pm

  Actually, SE, esp. considering the length, that was pretty funny, even if you got the number of people wrong.

  My opinion: this editorial aptly illustrates Goethe’s maxim that “When ideas fail, words come in very handy.”

• Anonymous
  4/16/2007 9:59 pm

  Opening sentence over at the Crimson:

  http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=518282

  “Harvard students and administrators tried to cope today as they heard of the shooting deaths of at least 33 people, including many students, at Virginia Tech.”

• dan
  4/17/2007 7:04 am

  I had the exact same thought! Perhaps their previous statements on the issue are now embarrassing?

• Anonymous
  4/17/2007 7:51 am

  There’s a terrific post, reproduced below, at Talking Points Memo by Larry Johnson on the macro version of this US solipsism (except that the media propagators of this version are ostensibly adults).

  Standing Eagle

  Breaking news! At least 31 Virginia Tech students gunned down. Cable news channels are wild with activity as they pump up the coverage a focus on the latest “crisis”. The media is commenting that this shooting is overwhelming the local medical facilities. Crisis is in the air. Well, at least it ain’t Iraq.

  Okay. Big deep breath. This is horrible and this is tragic and this gives us an idea of what it is like to live just one day in Iraq. Consider the following:

  04/15/07 Reuters: 19 bodies found in Baghdad on Saturday Police found the bodies of 19 people in various parts of Baghdad in the past 24 hours, police said
  04/15/07 Reuters: 20 Iraqi troops and policemen abducted A group linked to al Qaeda said it abducted 20 Iraqi troops and policemen and demanded the release of all Sunni women held in Iraq’s prisons, according to a Web statement

  04/15/07 Reuters: 20 Iraqi troops and policemen abducted A group linked to al Qaeda said it abducted 20 Iraqi troops and policemen and demanded the release of all Sunni women held in Iraq’s prisons, according to a Web statement

  section break

  04/15/07 Reuters: 4 killed by suicide bombers in Mosul Four people, including two Iraqi soldiers, were killed and 16 wounded when two oil trucks driven by suicide bombers exploded outside a military base in the northern city of Mosul, police said.

  04/15/07 AP: Suicide bomber kills 5, wounds 11 in northwest Baghdad a suicide bomber blew himself up on a minibus in northwest Baghdad, killing at least eight people and wounding 11, police and hospital officials said.

  04/15/07 AP: 37 die as car bomb hits near Iraq shrine A car bomb blasted through a busy bus station near one of Iraq’s holiest shrines Saturday, killing at least 37 people, police and hospital officials said.

  Let’s total the score: at least 65 Iraqis dead in four attacks vs. 31 Americans shot at Virginia Tech. Whoops, forgot the 20 kidnapped policemen. Can you imagine?

  The next time you hear Dick Cheney or George Bush blame the public attitude regarding Iraq on the media’s failure to report “good news”, examine carefully our reaction to the shooting at Virginia Tech. Look at our collective shock. Our horrified reaction. The public sorrow. Yet, in truth, this is an exceptional, unusual day in America. It is not our common experience. But we cannot say the same about Iraq.

  The people of Iraq are living in a Marquis de Sade version of Groundhog Day. It is like the Bill Murray movie-the same horrible day repeated with some new, bizarre twists-only not funny. Multiple body counts and explosions and shootings are the daily experience of the people of Iraq. They have been living this hell for four years. Just keep that fact in mind as you mourn the deaths of American students slain in Blacksburg, Virginia.

  -Standing Eagle

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