Henry Imler May 10th, 2007

When the shootings happened, the first person to tell our department
was a fellow TA. He started the conversation with, “Guess what is going
to be on the news for the next month.” The terrible thing was that
everyone rolled their eyes before they even heard what happened. Sure
enough, instead of focusing on the tragedy, the commentators and the
news shifted and tried to uncover the great unrecognized flaw in the
system that lead to the attacks. Never mind that a crazed person
decided to kill people, if only there were more safeguards in place
(and less liberty), this never would have happened. Politics, politics,
more guns, less guns, politics, real people died, Politics, politics,
positioning for elections, real families lost real people, ratings,
ratings, ratings.

When I saw this in the mail, my stomach turned.

There was also a weird attempt to nationalize the tragedy. It was
not a tragedy of mine, nor yours (probably), nor America’s. To make it
so robs something from the real people that lost real loved ones. It
bothers me somehow. Perhaps it is some sort of denial on my part. Who
knows. What I do know is that we should not make it about us when it is
really about them.

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