NIU Shooting
I couldn't help but bring this painful event up, mostly because I am so disturbed by it. I wanted to check and see how far in the news the NIU shooting on Friday had fallen. I checked the BBC news and there was a reference at the bottom of the page. The Washington Post had a photo slide show at the bottom of their home page. Upon a quick scan of the New York Times home page there didn't seem to be any link to a story covering the shooting, until I kept scanning down to the bottom where there was one reference under Education. Upon checking CNN.com I found a human interest story about the shooters girlfriend with a large eye catching photo at the top of their home page. Of course, the Chicago Tribune's homepage was an entire spread about the shooting (if it wasn't, I would have seriously doubted my sanity).
My point in looking at all this is to see how fast news passes away. The Virginia Tech shooting seemed to stop everyone dead in their tracks. This didn't seem to have as much of an impact. I wonder, is everyone becoming numb? All these shootings are awful and make me question the world. According to the news, both of the shooters had a history of mental illness. This brings up another question, are American so naive and unaware of mental illness that those who need help and support are not getting it?
Jack Johnson puts it best in his song Sleep Through the Static--"Who needs keys when we've got clubs? Who needs please when we've got guns?" and also in Fall Line--"somebody saw him jump, but nobody saw him slip, I guess he lost a lot of hope, and then he lost his grip."
