Best of the Web Today - April 17, 2007
By JAMES TARANTO
He Died Saving His Class
For those of us whose job it is to have opinions, an event like yesterday's massacre at Virginia Tech is a bigger challenge than, say, a terrorist attack. The murder of 32 people by South Korea native Cho Seung-hui is no less evil than massacres carried out by suicide bombers or hijackers, but it is harder to comprehend. Terrorism is carried out by an organized enemy with a political agenda; we can rally to defeat the enemy. The Virginia Tech shooter seems to have been a lone nut. He murdered all those people only to render his own life a nullity by committing suicide in the end.
So let's just note one act of heroism amid the horror, as reported by the Jerusalem Post:
Professor Liviu Librescu, 76, threw himself in front of the shooter when the [murderer] attempted to enter his classroom. The Israeli mechanics and engineering lecturer was shot to death, "but all the students lived--because of him," Virginia Tech student Asael Arad--also an Israeli--told Army Radio.
Several of Librescu's other students sent e-mails to his wife, Marlena, telling of how he had blocked the gunman's way and saved their lives, said Librescu's son, Joe.
"My father blocked the doorway with his body and asked the students to flee," Joe Librescu said in a telephone interview from his home outside of Tel Aviv. "Students started opening windows and jumping out."
Librescu was a Holocaust survivor who escaped communist Romania for Israel in 1978 and moved to Virginia in 1986. By coincidence, he was murdered on Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Massacre at a Gun-Free School
Predictably, opponents of Second Amendment rights seized opportunistically on the Virginia Tech massacre. "It is long overdue for us to take some common-sense actions to prevent tragedies like this from continuing to occur," said a statement from the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. White House spokeswoman Dana Perino got questions like this one in yesterday's press briefing:
Columbine, Amish school shooting, now this, and a whole host of other gun issues brought into schools--that's not including guns on the streets and in many urban areas and rural areas. Does [sic] there need to be some more restrictions? Does there need to be gun control in this country?
And of course the New York Times, while noted that "it is premature to draw too many lessons from this tragedy," draws one anyway:
What is needed, urgently, is stronger controls over the lethal weapons that cause such wasteful carnage and such unbearable loss.
But there is another side to this argument. Longtime readers may recall the lead item in our Jan. 18, 2002, column, which concerned a shooting spree at another Virginia institution of higher learning, the Appalachian School of Law. The gunman, Peter Odighizuwa, killed three, and probably would have killed more but for another student's gun:
Students ended the rampage by confronting and then tackling the gunman, officials said.
"We saw the shooter, stopped at my vehicle and got out my handgun and started to approach Peter," Tracy Bridges, who helped subdue the shooter with other students, said Thursday on NBC's "Today" show. "At that time, Peter threw up his hands and threw his weapon down. Ted was the first person to have contact with Peter, and Peter hit him one time in the face, so there was a little bit of a struggle there."
Appalachian is a private institution, Virginia Tech a public one; and Virginia law prohibits guns on campus. Early last year there was an effort in the state Legislature to change that law, but it died in committee. As the Roanoke Times reported at the time:
Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker was happy to hear the bill was defeated. "I'm sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly's actions because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus."
There are reasons one may be wary of arming academia. College students spend a lot of time drinking and carousing, and so perhaps they're better off without firearms. Academic disputes can get vicious; we wouldn't want them to get bloody. But it does not seem a stretch to think that if Cho Seung-hui had encountered someone else with a gun, fewer people would lie dead at Virginia Tech.
What Would We Do Without Experts?
o "Security Experts: University Shootings Like Virginia Tech Massacre Aren't Totally Preventable"--headline, FoxNews.com, April 16
o "Experts: Tragedies Like This Are Tough to Stop"--headline, Chicago Sun-Times, April 17
o "Gun experts say the number of shots fired indicate [sic], at the very least, that the gunman had large quantities of ammunition."--ABCNews.com, April 16
Stare Master
A headline in London's Sunday Times reads "Don't Stare at Muslims Says Advice to Schools":
Pupils and teachers have been told by an official body not to stare at Muslims for fear of causing offence.
A document intended to educate against religious intolerance and sectarianism urges teachers to "make pupils aware of the various forms of Islamophobia, ie stares, verbal abuse, physical abuse." . . .
Osama Saeed, a spokesman for the Muslim Association of Britain, accused officials of going too far. "There are far more serious elements of Islamophobia. People look at all sorts of things--that can just be a glance. A glance and a stare are two different things--glances happen naturally when all sorts of things catch your eye whereas a stare is probably gawking at something.
"Personally I have not encountered much of a problem with people staring. I don't know how you legislate for that."
Good for Saeed for speaking out against this especially condescending manifestation of multiculturalism. To see just how condescending, consider this article from yesterday's Telegraph, "Don't Stare at the Apes, Zoo Tells Visitors":
Most people visit zoos to see the animals--but visitors to Antwerp Zoo in Belgium are being told not to look at the apes.
Instead, visitors are now confronted with signs telling them that making prolonged eye contact with the apes leaves them sad and withdrawn. Zoo staff reckon staring can result in the creatures becoming less sociable.
Multiculturalists usually claim to be respecting people from different cultures while in fact treating them with a decided lack of respect.
'Despite'
The Oakland (Mich.) Press has an upbeat story about military recruitment:
Kyle Thiel can't wait to join the U.S. Army and fight the "war on terror" in Iraq as part of an infantry unit.
"Ever since 9/11, that's all I wanted to do," said Thiel, 18, of White Lake Township. . . .
The Army is enlisting far more soldiers than before the war, officials said.
"Pre-invasion, the military was in a different mode. The Cold War had ended and the Army didn't need to be at such full strength," said Army spokesman Jeff Landenberger.
"Now a lot of people come in strictly for patriotism. They want to be part of history," added Army Sgt. Aaron Stuckey, 28, of Birmingham.
The headline: "Despite War, Army Draws Recruits." Despite?
John's Locks
"He's pretty, he has flowing locks, he's young-looking," Andrew Sullivan has said of John Edwards. According to the Los Angeles Times, Edwards spends a pretty penny on his pretty locks:
Edwards, whose wind-swept look has drawn its share of comment in the presidential race, evidently took time out from his campaign to stop for a haircut.
But this wasn't your basic barber shop. Rather, Edwards apparently visited Torrenueva Hair Designs in Beverly Hills, owned by celebrity stylist Joseph Torrenueva. And he paid Rodeo Drive prices. Twice.
According to his campaign finance report, Edwards' campaign spent $400 at the salon on Feb. 20. Two weeks later, it spent another $400.
The reports did not say explicitly that it was Edwards who received the haircuts, and neither his campaign nor Torrenueva returned calls seeking comment.
Meanwhile us ordinary Joes in America No. 2 spend 18 bucks at SuperCuts.
Seeing Red, Looking at Blue
Cynthia Tucker of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, in a column deploring efforts against election fraud, makes this astonishing observation:
Republicans seem to believe that if they lost an election, somebody cheated. . . . Want to win elections? Try attracting voters instead of repelling them. Try new policies with broad appeal.
Does she really think Al Gore is a Republican?
Zero-Tolerance Watch
And we do mean "watch"! "A fifteen-year old boy in America was incarcerated for twelve days, wrongly accused of making a hoax bomb threat--because his school had forgotten that the clocks had gone forward," reports Britain's Metro Cafe:
Cody Webb was arrested last month, after Hempfield Area High School [in Greensburg, a suburb of Pittsburgh] received a bomb threat on their student hotline--which provides a range of information to students about the school--at 3.17am on March 11th. They believed they'd found the culprit when they traced the phone number they thought was responsible to Webb.
Unfortunately, they forgot that the clocks had switched to Daylight Saving Time that morning. Webb, who's never even had a detention in his life, had actually made his call an hour earlier.
Despite the fact that the recording of the call featured a voice that sounded nothing like Webb's, the police arrested Webb and he spent 12 days in a juvenile detention facility before the school eventually realised their mistake.
Webb gave an insight into the school's impressive investigative techniques, saying that he was ushered in to see the principal, Kathy Charlton. She asked him what his phone number was, and , according to Webb, when he replied "she started waving her hands in the air and saying 'we got him, we got him.' "
The Metro Cafe Web site accompanies the story with a picture of a timepiece atop the caption: "Clocks: fiendishly complicated devices."
Good News for Dial-Up Subscribers
"Turtle Races Being Tracked on Web"--headline, Associated Press, April 15
Breaking News From 1899
"Kenyan Cheruiyot Wins Third Boston Marathon"--headline, Reuters, April 17
62 Years After the War Is Over?
"WWII Raid Starts Sooner Than Expected"--headline, Oregonian, April 16
Gravity Strikes Again
"Man Falls When Aspen Chairlift Breaks"--headline, Associated Press, April 15
Superman Just Dusts Himself Off and Walks Away
"Normal Man Hospitalized After Motorcycle Accident"--headline, WJBC-AM Web site (Bloomington, Ill.), April 16
Physician, Heal Thyself
"Mental Health Office to Shrink"--headline, News & Observer (Raleigh, N.C.), April 17
Making Popeye Wistful
"FDA Issues Olive Recall"--headline, WNDU-TV Web site (South Bend, Ind.), April 14
What Would We Do Without Ex-Gamblers?
"Ex-Gambler: Casinos Can Cause Problems"--headline, Register-Herald (Beckley, W.Va.), April 15
Help Wanted
" 'Pimply' Teen Sought by Cops"--headline, Barrie (Ontario) Examiner, April 17
News You Can Use
"On the Road? Don't Skip Your Workout"--headline, CNN.com, April 16
Bottom Stories of the Day
o "Frog Counting Postponed a Week"--headline, Times Union (Albany, N.Y.), April 16
o "Global Pandemic Risk Unchanged: Report"--headline, Business Insurance, April 16
o "Former GOP Rep. Pete McCloskey Registers as a Democrat"--headline, Associated Press, April 16
o "Pulitzers Scattered Among News Outlets"--headline, Associated Press, April 17
o "Oprah Will Lead Healing After Imus"--headline, WSB-TV Web site (Atlanta), April 16
o "Iran Condemns Shooting Rampage at Virginia Tech"--headline, Jerusalem Post, April 17
Juche-Koochie-Koo
One of the secrets of certain dictators' success is to make themselves appear ridiculous, and therefore unthreatening, to the outside world, while inflicting horrific atrocities on their own people. One of this columnist's greatest moral weaknesses is that we fall right into this trap. For instance, we think North Korea's Kim Jong-il is hilarious. Here's a report from Pyongyang in the Financial Times:
Thousands of North Koreans wearing fluorescent national dress and unwavering smiles swirled in the main square on Pyongyang last night, sashaying beneath banners celebrating their "military first" revolutionary spirit.
North Korea's negotiating partners are becoming increasingly frustrated over the regime's failure to comply even partially with the Saturday deadline of an ambitious denuclearisation deal but there was only one date North Koreans cared about this weekend--the birthday of Kim Il-sung.
The founder of North Korea was born 95 years ago yesterday and April 15 remains the most auspicious day in the North Korean calendar.
"When you are travelling around Pyongyang today you might see people who look happy and you might see some who are gloomy," said Li Yong-su, who was guiding the FT around the capital. "That is because they are thinking about the Great Leader on his birthday."
If people look happy, that's because of the Great Leader. If people look gloomy, that's also because of the Great Leader. The Great Leader is like "global warming"--no matter what the weather, he's the cause.
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