Friday, December 07, 2007

Here's an idea


Let's continue to make the recent shopping mall shooting incident front-page news for the next several months. Let's spend a bunch of time leading every TV newscast and talk show with more and more eyewitness accounts of the tragedy. Let's also get a bunch of experts from various fields to sit on discussion panels to hash out all the problems in American society that would cause a troubled young person to act out in this way.

After all, it's way more interesting and compelling than, say, the fact that we're on the brink of bombing the nads right off of Iran. Or that our economy is in the shithouse. Teenage shooting sprees are way more fun.

Maybe if we talk a whole lot about this shooting, we'll encourage other troubled teens to act out in similar ways! Wouldn't that be great? A lot of troubled people have a morbid fascination with macabre forms of celebrity, like this mall killer and the Columbine kids. If we play our cards right and continue to obsess over this in the media, we might get lucky and enjoy a few more sensational stories of this ilk before the '00s are up!

And as a bonus, maybe we'll even get to have metal detectors installed in every shopping mall across the country to protect ourselves from this ever increasing phenomenon. That would be awesome!

Right?

25 comments:

Cap'n Ergo "XL+II" Jinglebollocks said...

the Orla(dil)do malls are on Red Alert, I hears. People are handwringing wondering if'n they're SAFE while they shop at M&M World and are filing out of Old Navy in droves because stonewashed denim is not effective at stopping bullets when you hide behind it.

All forgetting, that if you're THAT 'noid, you don't HAVE to go to th' mall in the 1st place. You can stay at home and watch th' news.

KK said...

that's why it is impossible for sane people to watch the news.

walter cronkite must be swallowing his own drool by now.

next thing to come up is that we should ban guns - and that will bring all the experts out!

thank god for NPR.

Jake's Mom said...

Perhaps this is the works of admen getting us to shop only over the internet. Virtual malls will be the only shopping avenue in the near future. Malls gone the way of personal notes, books, friendly dinners out and more.
Walter showed emotion...something that is lacking in today's newscasters. And it would have been more than fitting to NOT put it on the news since all that idiot wanted was "to be famous".

lulu said...

You're cranky today. Maybe some shopping therapy would help.

Dale said...

Shut In Shopping works for me Jake's Mom!

Old Lady said...

Yarrr!!

Narrator said...

Is this punishment for Afghanistan and Iraq? Hmm.

Hey, bright side? At least with the steady nosedive of the American economy, there won't be many shoppers to shoot this jolly season.

Merry Christmas!

Me said...

Preach it.

Oh the media! They're like a perpetual motion machine. The slightest inertia and they never seem to be able to stop -- until something else pushes in another direction.

But their guilt on overshadowing the issues is LEGENDARY.

Joe said...

I can see someone else has been yelling at the television set.

All I can say is, amen brother. You're absolutely right.

GrizzBabe said...

And to think, there are some people out there who actually enjoy the obsessive compulsive over analyzing. Fortunately, I'm not one of them.

anandamide said...

....or we could just all stop going to shopping malls.

You may think I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one.

Tenacious S said...

This is exactly why I have stopped watching the news. I like my Yahoo page. I pick what I want to read and ignore the rest.

Doc said...

Or we could give everyone a handgun as they enter the mall. That might work right?

Doc

deadspot said...

I just had the Most Brilliant Idea In The History Of Cable Television.

Teenage shooting sprees are popular. High School Musical is popular. Let's Reeses this baby: You got singing and dancing in my murderous rampage! You got random shooting in my musical!

Next fall on Disney: High School Shooting Spree. For 13 episodes, a gaggle of kooky troubled band and drama geeks go on a rampage complete with overproduced song and dance numbers.

And I have the perfect corporate sponsor: Skittles.

(I know... you thought I was going to say Spree. Too obvious.)

Dino said...

yeah and while they rehash it they make sure to point out the mistakes so the next people wont make the same mistakes

Moderator said...

I think every house should be installed with metal detectors.

BeckEye said...

Yes, why are they talking about shootings on the news when Britney Spears is stealing lighters from gas stations?? She's an unstoppable menace! More coverage, more coverage.

Eebie said...

Absolutely! And people should vote solely on the basis of gay marriage and abortion - decisions that affect 0.5% of the population.

And damn it Beckeye, is Brit back to her kleptoaniac ways? There's a crisis!

After all, Iran doesn't need nads and if hey get castrated with a bomb or pair of sheep shears, that's not news for the American public because it won't help sell commercials.

Doc said...

I truly wish I had something, anything, to add, yet I am too dumbsquizzled to speak.

Doc

Some Guy said...

We have no malls around here. I guess I'm safe.

Yeah, the mass media sah-hucks.

Me said...

You must haved LOVED the front page of the NYPost yesterday. And by "love" I mean "spat up a spleen in livid rage".

The NYPost is a rag of the lowest order. I'd not use it to wipe, for fear of infection. I'd sooner read The Star, and that only after I've fed my eyeballs to subway rats.

Melinda June said...

you should blog more.

Mnmom said...

In my younger days I worked with adults with mental illness and/or developmental disabilities. Whenever the local news crew was out getting the "public's reaction" guess who they'd always find - yep, my clients. So I hate the news. Whores, all of them.

Writeprocrastinator said...

But will you blog before Christmas?

Katie Schwartz said...

oh, cpunch, you are so right... that was a very important post.