Hasten to May

April hates America (see posts below). I wish I could understand why.

I really wanted to write a post this week about how the coverage of the fund-raising achievements of America's Next Top Democrats is really bristling my britches. The suggestion is that the amount of money raised is equal to their placement in the horse race, which both a falacy and creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. That is, if the media presents us with only two viable candidates (because they've raised the most money), we will tend to see only two viable candidates. But I'm not sure if national tragedy shouldn't take precedence over media critiques.

That said, it seems unreasonable to me to suggest that a large and decentralized university like Virginia Tech could warn all its students -- on-campus and commuters alike -- of a shooting in time to have any bearing on what happened one and a half hours later. How would such "information" get out to students, and how would or where would they have received it? Is it reasonable to expect that an 8:00am e-mail would have saved any lives? We may be problem-solvers by nature, but the "problem" here isn't really "How could this have been prevented;" the problem is, "What do we do now, knowing what we know?"

According to articles on the New York Times, one of the two Engineering professors slain was a 75-year old Holocaust survivor who apparently blocked the classroom door, sacrificing himself to the shooter so that his students could hide or escape through windows. I know a lot of young people died, but this one really gets at me. To live through genocide then die from handguns.

I tried to tune in for Olbermann last night and unfortunately saw the start of the Chuck Scarborough show instead. He said, "Some people are already blaming gun laws tonight, while others are pointing at Hollywood." I had to leave the room, and haven't turned on a TV since.

(That last statement is factually correct but occludes the fact that I happily watched part of Sesame Street this morning with two 14-month-old boys who as of yet know nothing about the capacity of humans for evil and duplicity. Or so their father hopes.)
Our former governor is pretending to run for President.