Cho Seung-Hui, Twisted Playwright
A former classmate of Virginia Tech killer Cho Seung-Hui allowed his employer AOL to post two of Cho’s student plays. Ian MacFarlane went on to describe Cho as “the exact stereotype of what one would typically think of as a ’school shooter’ – a loner, obsessed with violence, and serious personal problems.” After reading Cho’s plays he considered what he would do if Cho acted on the violence displayed in his plays. Disturbingly MacFarlane wonders,
As far as notifying authorities, there isn’t (to my knowledge) any system set up that lets people say “Hey! This guy has some issues! Maybe you should look into this guy!” If there were, I definitely would have tried to get the kid some help. I think that could have had a good chance of averting yesterday’s tragedy more than anything.
Due to the violence in his writings an English instructor recommended Cho go to counseling.
After Columbine America looked closely at bullying. Will yesterday’s shootings focus attention on odd English students? There are lots of odd people, even odd people with twisted, violent fantasies. 99.999% of them are harmless. The last thing we need is a government round up of people simply for being quiet, anti-social, but non-violent.
“Cho Seung-Hui’s Plays”
UPDATE: The Washington Post touched on Seung-Hui’s penchant for violent video games. Nice how quickly the media gets all reductionist. The simple “video games made him kill” template is quickly forming.
UPDATE II: European newspapers displayed their own intellectual laziness by blaming the murders on America’s gun culture, the NRA, and–get this–Charleton Heston.
[via Wizbang]
Not so fast! My older brother used to pick on me when we were kids, and it was always right after “Planet of the Apes” played on television.
And once he told me to “get your DIRTY LITTLE SISTER hands off of me.”
It was Chuck Heston who inspired him; there’s no doubt in my mind.