Peter Krupa

Blogging looks easy, right? Just whack out a bunch of poorly-researched, polemical crap about some inane topic and hit the “post” button. But what’s really hard is to do that over and over and over again. Not because it’s difficult, mechanically speaking, but it’s hard to keep up the requesite outrage.

It’s fatigue, I think.

Like when I see an article in The Nation about Cuba. Right there, I know I shouldn’t read any further due to blood pressure concerns, but maybe I skip to the author’s bio, and I see that “Rosa Miriam Elizalde… is a columnist for the Cuban newspaper Juventud Rebelde and author of several books… She has twice won the Juan Gualberto Gomez prize, Cuba’s most prestigious journalism award.”

And I don’t know. I guess I could rant and rave. I could link to the Reporters Without Borders press freedom index that puts Cuba in 165th place out of 168 - that’s a shade below Burma, but a tad better than Eritrea. I wonder if those countries give prestigious journalism awards as well.

But really, so much outrage is exhausting. Best to take it slow.

There must be some odd energy coursing through the Universe this morning. Reuters, CNN, and - of all things - The Nation have all just run honest stories about Cuba’s sex tourism, rebelious rock bands, and media control, respectively.

Now, over to you Bob Woodruff.

From The Onion:

Middle East Conflict Intensifies As Blah Blah Blah, Etc. Etc.

In the aftermath of a whole series of incidents, there have also been troubling reports of just fill in the blanks. Middle East experts say the still somehow worsening situation has inflamed age-old sectarian tensions between the Sunnis, Shiites, Semites, Kurds, Turks, Saudis, Persians, Wahhabis, radicals, extremists, Baathists, mullahs, clerics, et al, which is likely to lead to more gurgle-gurgle over the coming weeks and months. 

…

Also, Ahmadinejad, Iran’s nuclear program, bin Laden at large, Moqtada al-Sadr, Moqtada al-Sadr’s militia, Fallujah, renegade mullahs, embedded and/or beheaded journalists, oil revenues, stockpiles of former Soviet armaments, freedom, racism, Halliburton, women’s role in Islamic society, the Quran, withdrawing troops, economic disparities, Sikhs, Pakistanis, oil, rebuilding, stories of hope, the Saudi royal family, the Holy Land, insurgents, and the tragedy of Sept. 11th. 

And that about sums it up. I think I’ll give up newspapers for awhile. Or probably not.

The Dean of Admissions at MIT resigned after it came to light that she - ready for this? - made up stuff on her resume. According to the Boston Globe:

Jones listed on her resume that she had degrees from Albany Medical College, Union College, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, but she had no degrees from any of those schools, said MIT chancellor Phillip Clay.

She’s been Dean of Admissions since 1998, and she’s been working at MIT for 28 years.

Now, I’m sure all sorts of people are snickering into their sleeves about hypocrisy and whatnot, but there’s something else about this that should be much more embarrassing: Jones apparently had no problem doing her job sans degrees.

So, why did we go to school again?

Here’s an idea: What’s the best way to cut down on illegal immigration? A recession! No one will risk their lives to cross the border if there are no jobs on the other side. Sure, it’s a bit like Homer Simpson’s boxing style, but whatever. Now at least when we’re all out on the street holding signs that say “Will work for food,” we won’t be competing with Mexicans.

I can’t believe it. In our zest to anticipate the various scapegoatings in the Cho Whatsit-Something Virginia Tech murder spree, we forgot one: violent Korean movies. I think we can be excused because violent movies are such an old-school scapegoat, like dancing or card-playing. Who thought it would crop up again?

And yet it has. What if Cho Whatsit-Something was imitating Oldboy, an ULTRAVIOLENT Korean movie about REVENGE and KILLING? The pictures look convincing anyway, and for all those millions of people in the American Heartland who will never bother to see a Korean movie, that’s good enough.

Except Oldboy has nothing to do with killing defenseless students. In fact, if my memory serves me correctly, there’s hardly any shooting at all. Not only that, but the guy obsessed with revenge ends badly. Both of them. The freaking moral of the movie is to be nice to people, that revenge doesn’t pay, and neither does malicious rumor mongering.

The thing is, Cho Whatsit-Something was crazy. The movie didn’t roust him from an otherwise placid existence by inspiring him to imitation. He was crazy. He could have been inflamed by The Sound of Music. Because he was crazy.

Anyway, glad this scapegoat was a relatively flaccid one. Now, please. Go see Oldboy. It is excellent.

From the LA Times:

Convincing ourselves that we’ve been vicariously traumatized by the pain of strangers has become a cherished national pastime. Thus, the Washington Post this week accompanied online stories about the shooting with a clickable sidebar, “Where to Find Support” — apparently on the assumption that the mere experience of glancing at articles about the tragedy would be so emotionally devastating that readers would require trained therapists.

Has anyone noticed any thoughtful op-eds/columns/commentary musing on whether Alberto Gonzales is getting nailed because he’s Latino? No? Sheesh, where’s the National Council of La Raza when you need it. Now, back to your regularly scheduled ass-raping.

While we’re still holding vigils and trying to come to terms with what it all means, one thing is certain: Cho Seung-Hui’s plays are the perfect length for YouTube reenactments. Now, in what is possibly the perfect incarnation of Our Society These Days, a fat man wearing a South Park T-shirt and breathing mostly through his mouth gives a solo rendition of “Richard McBeef” from the bowels of the “Parent’s Basement Playhouse.”

I know it’s been said before, but seriously: On YouTube, nothing is sacred. (And I believe we can expect an essay to that effect to appear somehwere in the mainstream media in T-minus 10 days.)

So here’s an interesting - and quintessentially modern - ethical quandry: NBC has a whole bunch of photos, videos, letters, etc. that the psycho killer sent them the morning of the Virginia Tech shootings. Will they be posted on the internet? And if not, why not? To protect privacy, avoid causing more pain, etc.? Ha. Continuing police investigation? Fair enough, I can wait till it’s over. But afterward? Can we see the videos?

And if not, why not?