The Liberal Media Machine Claims Another Victim

As I was driving back from the camp that will be our retreat site for our Confirmation retreat this morning with Steve, I kept searching and searching my mind for something to write about today. Of course, I could just write about what I did with my weekend and point out the fact that I feel like I have nothing going on in my life, but I have written two or three pages to the contrary. Or I could write about the Rangers winning their past two games or the Mavericks losing their first playoff game or the Stars forcing a game seven, but I really don’t like writing about sports all the time. I have written so much about the Rangers lately that I probably should be getting a check from their publicity department. I have finished the outline for my bible study with the junior high kids tonight and double checked both email accounts. Still couldn’t think of anything to write about when…oh look, another story about the Virginia Tech shootings. But this one was different. Don’t get me wrong, it was a horrible tragedy and the victims, students, and families are all in my prayers, but are we being too sensationalist about this. I wrote a while back about the Don Imus’ assumed racial comments and chimed in on the sensationalism about that. Then the Va. Tech thing happens and the focus moves from that to this. Why such hoopla? These are real people with real lives and real problems who deserve to be respected and not flaunted or haunted by media coverage. Geez, when will we stop making such a big deal out of these things? When will we be able to face it, accept it, embrace it, and move on?

The article I just came across was only indirectly related to the Va. Tech shootings, but the reaction was close to the same. An adjunct professor at Emmanuel College in Boston was fired for having a discussion about topics that parallel the Va. Tech shootings. Nicholas Winset taught financial accounting at the college where the administration had asked the faculty to engage students on the issue. What exactly did he do or say that warranted his firing? The five-minute demonstration on Wednesday, two days after a student killed 32 people on the Virginia Tech campus, included a discussion of gun control, whether to respond to violence with violence, and the public's "celebration of victimhood." During the demonstration, Winset pointed a marker at some students and said "pow," pretending to shoot them. Then one student pretended to shoot Winset to illustrate his point that the gunman might have been stopped had another student or faculty member been armed. Oh no…they were pointing markers at each other! What’s next? Pillow fights? Give me a break, people, this is college and involving demonstrations such as this into lecturing is the only way to keep students from dozing off. Young people are becoming more and more desensitized as the years go by, so in order to get their attention and hold it for any given about of time you have to be edgy and controversial. Often times when the high school youth leaders won’t pay attention to me during a meeting I will throw something or break something to get their attention, and then they are fixated.

Plus, classrooms are meant to be places where you expand your mind and your horizons. The classroom is where you leave naivety at the door and come to learn about the truth in the world. All Winset was trying to do is illustrate a true situation and alternatives to the outcome that was achieved by the gunmen at Va. Tech. But on Friday, he got a letter saying he was fired and ordering him to stay off campus. Winset argued that the liberal arts school was stifling free discussion by firing him, and he said the move would have a "chilling effect" on open debate. He posted an 18-minute video on the online site YouTube defending his action. I’ve watched the video and this is obviously an intelligent man who was trying to get his students to think outside the norm and fully understand the topics he was presenting. This is not a malicious, violent, or irreverent man getting his jollies off by spoofing the original shooting. He is not unlike any other idealistic college professor I have ever met, full of zeal for what he believes.

What I find fascinating about this whole thing is that during this demonstration Winset had discussed the “celebration of victimhood” that has been prevalent during the past week where the media has looked for anyone and everyone at Va. Tech to make a statement about what happened. Some of them who weren’t even on campus at the time were paraded in front of glinting camera lenses to give a statement. Everyone is a victim and the people just eat that up. And if you aren’t broken up enough about what happened, you are a cold heartless asshole (i.e. see Simon Cowl incident on American Idol). Even I had to write at the beginning of the blog who sad I was just so no one would misunderstand my following rant as irreverence for the dead. The irony is that Winset was introducing this idea to students and it was ultimately the reason he was fired.

I am going to leave this blog with a shocking statement for everyone to think about. What do the victims really want? The girls on the Rutgers' basketball team were offended by Don Imus’ comments, but once they met him and he apologized to them they said they liked him. But the media (and media hogs like Al Sharpton) forced the issue before the real victims had anything to say and fired Don Imus. He lost his livelihood over this sensationalism. The real victims of the Va. Tech shootings are dead or have buried someone important to them in the past week. These people don’t want the cameras around anymore; they want to be able to deal with their loss on their own. Lives were lost and the pain is only compounded by this sensationalism. If there was a victim of Nicholas Winset’s classroom demonstration, it was the students in the classroom. What did one of those students have to say? Student Junny Lee, 19, told The Boston Globe that most students didn't appear to find Winset's demonstration offensive. He lost his livelihood as a result of media sensationalism.