I wasn’t going to weigh in on the recent tragedy at Virginia Tech, but after 3 days of watching NBC’s Today Show host Matt Lauer’s petulant, reactionary coverage, I just have to join the fray.
Take this exchange on Tuesday between Lauer and Omar Samaha, whose sister Reema had been murdered:
Lauer: is there anything but anger in your heart for this young man who committed these crimes?
Samaha: Angry? I can’t even say I’m angry yet…There’s nothing that’s going to bring my sister back…and that’s bottom line to me…we’re not the only ones…its important the community is coming together because we are all family here.
I was impressed by Samaha’s reply and the way he dodged, unwittingly or not, Lauer’s vulgar leading question. When Lauer turned back to face the camera, I wasn’t sure if the anger in his expression was due to the story he was covering, or the fact that Samaha didn’t utter the words he wanted to hear.
**************************************
This morning as the details of Seung-hui Cho’s psychological profile came more clearly into focus, Lauer found it important to stress, at least twice, that Cho was not depressed, that he was psychotic. He spat the word “psychotic” out with an edge of disparagement in his voice, as if Cho had chosen psychosis over the more palatable diagnosis of depression as some sort of lifestyle choice.
**************************************
At the turn of the 20th Century authors such as Theodore Dreiser illuminated the harsh realities behind the fiction of the American Dream. In Dreiser’s novel “An American Tragedy” which was based on a true 1906 murder case, the protagonist ( Clyde Griffiths) is found guilty of drowning an ex girlfriend whose murder he pre-planned but did not actually commit. In Dreiser’s fiction Clyde Griffiths was victim of a confrontation of class, money and a need to possess something he thought had been promised to him. Provocative at the time, this theme became a well known and often retold perspective on life in America. At the turn of this century, we are seeing the new, less personal but no less sorrowful ‘American Tragedy,” a confrontation of disenfranchisement, glorified gun culture and misplaced rage being increasingly played out in front of our collective eyes through the media. Instead of great authors revealing the truths of our culture through fiction, we have glowering numb-skulls like Matt Lauer spinning fiction, conjecture and blame before the truth can even unfold.
**************************************
It seemed to me that it would be at least three days before the information I needed to know to begin understanding this case would come to light, and I wasn’t wrong. Beyond the obvious conjectures about his issues with women and disdain for the rich, the details of Cho’s psychological profile are very sad indeed. Multiple complaints of stalking behavior filed by VT coeds, teachers, counselors and acquaintances (he appears to have had no friends) worried about his behavior and his lurid writing, an involuntary stay in a mental hospital during which he was assessed as an imminent danger to himself or others and then released ( a complicated mess of free will and privacy rights), parents who seem to be invisible, the ease with which he was able to lie on his application and purchase his handguns from a dealer who thought he looked like a clean cut college kid; all of these indicators, and still he slipped through the cracks so easily. Like his Columbine mentors before him, Cho is the face of the new American Tragedy, and as things currently stand, we should brace ourselves to see much more of it in the future.
Vox Pop Sudari 