At this point while doing the keystrokes for the rough draft for this column, caroming off on a tangential topic about which shots are morally acceptable and which are not has a powerfully appealing aspect, but we will address that topic some other day in a future column and continue objectively assembling a collection of gun related items for this particular column.
It seems very unlikely that corporate media will permit any of their indentured propagandists to dwell on the fact that the shooter had a college degree and was overqualified to work the "want a side order of fries with your burger?" jobs available.
If the police found any books by Marx or Engels in the
shooter's apartment, Uncle Rushbo & Co. will be jubilant. Have the conservative pundits ever noted that
the Tea Party movement in the USA
strongly echoes the Black Hundred political movement in Tsarist Russia?
Some pundits have suggested that the shooter wanted fame and media attention and point out the culprit's dyed hair as proof that the fellow was bonkers and willing to go to extremes to gain attention. Have any of these expert pundits walked around in a college town lately? If they have they will learn that the War in Vietnam has ended since they graduated and that some young folks these days sport hair dyed green, purple, or gray. Have any of the musicians who pioneered the punk rock genre and used the retro Iroquois haircut started to go bald?
After hearing some recent news reports indicating that a
majority of young people want to be famous, we stumbled upon a curious link
connecting Ernest Hemingway, Jack Kerouac, and Hunter S. Thompson. Biographers indicate that all three
considered being a famous celebrity a curse rather than a gift of fate.
[Both Hemingway and Hunter Thompson were avid gun enthusiasts. We can't immediately recall any passages from Kerouac's writing which mentioned guns. We have often wondered (word play alert!) if the inventory for Hunter's private arsenal included a Thompson submachine gun.
Back in the day when this columnist was too young to qualify
for a driver's license, weekly magazines (such as Look and Colliers?) often
featured an ad offering Thompson submachine guns which had blocked up
barrels. Quite often those ads were
adjacent to other ads which offered replacement parts (such as barrels?) for
obsolete military weapons. We haven't
seen any of those ads recently and so we wonder if the Thompson submachine gun
is now considered an assault rifle or not.]
Isn't it rather poignant that the anti-Establishment rock bands from the Sixties, who warned their contemporaries about the dangers of commercialism, have come to epitomize the lucrative aspect of fame? Some day we will get around to writing a column that will convey our philosophy about how fame can be a double edged sword.
[The illusive mystery writer K. C. Constantine was once
quoted as saying he wrote and avoided publicity because he had had his fill of
fame when he played professional baseball.
Our hunch is that the writer's secret identity would be that of a former
member of the N. Y. Yankees who had a subsequent career as a sports caster and
lived in the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania.]
Is the anti-capitalism beatnik/hippie philosophy still being preached? A blogger who posts tips and hints about how to run away to join a hippie commune will get a constant trickle of visitors seeking information on that very subject. Maybe we'll write a column on that topic.
Is it an example of hypocrisy to note that the conservatives
who advocate availability of assault rifles for the masses often live in very
secure compounds and fastidiously avoid malls and public movie theaters where
they might encounter germs or stray bullets?
Would it be an example of à ¼ber-irony if the gift shop at the World's
Laziest Journalist World Headquarters were to offer a T-shirt reading: "I love hypocrisy!"?
After 9-11, people in the L. A. area who were being admitted to free movie screenings for critics and journalists, were searched for weapons, so is it another example of hypocrisy if people who see new films in a secure location condemn motion pictures for inciting violence at public theaters? Or is that an acceptable example of double standard thinking?
Speaking of cinematic violence, when we were an enthusiastic
Three Stooges fan, a relative pointed out that the mayhem in those comedies was
"play acting" and noted that the only time an uncle killed an enemy soldier (he
was a Seabee who was going for water on Guadalcanal),
he hit the fellow on the head with an empty bucket.
Are the journalists in the media suffering from sensational event deficit disorder? Do you expect to see/hear any gun control debate on the Sunday talk shows during the first weekend of the sports games in London? After a news event has been featured on the covers of the weekly news magazines, it becomes ancient history.
Didn't President George W. Bush end the War in Iraq
when he signed a peace treaty with Saddam Hussein at an event that was held on
the deck of an aircraft carrier?
As this column was being written, the disk jockey was sorting through a mountain of material to select the best relevant music to play when the time to roll the credits arrives. There are so many songs about shooting that it would be difficult to select the top ten. Items like "Frankie and Johnnie" and "Stagerlee" are fixtures in American Pop Culture. Using the Gonuts song "Hot for Twinkies" would be too confusing for anyone who is not a trivia expert on San Francisco Political History. Is some of the best of Ennio Morricone's music appropriate? If the disk jockey plays the Ride of the Valkyries, should the columnist say "Getcha a case of beer for that!"? Should he play the theme song from "High Noon"? "I hate Mondays!"?
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
