V-Tech Update: NBC still doesn't get it; posts portions of manifesto; possible answer to when this was compiled
Rapid response blogosphere to the resuce, or so we wish ... Back to the update this morning from Allah, because more has been added. First up is the observation that NBC and other outlets believe that the EIGHTEEN HOURS OF BOMBARDMENT in their coverage of the manifesto's enough (how magnanimous of them), and they're going to "limit" clips they show of it now. But that didn't stop NBC from posting five pages of it on their site.
I should note that Mr. Cho did mention 11 September, Osama, and Kim Jong-Il on page two of the NBC manifesto coverage. But it's not jihadist rhetoric (NOTE to readers, NBC has redacted the profanity in the manifesto):
"Are you happy now that you destroyed my life? Now that you have stolen everything you could from me? Now that you have gone on a 9/11 on my life like [expletive] Osama. Now that you have [expletive] your own people like [expletive] Kim Jong-Il. Now that you have gone on a hummer safari on my life like [expletive] Bush? Are you happy now?"
For all those out there still searching for an Islamic connect, you can call off the search. This isn't jihadi talk. This is rambling BS. He's not proclaiming his support for the animals we're fighting. Hell, he levels an indictment at Osama, Kim, and Bush. Folks, he hated the world he lived in, or at least how he perceived it to be.
On page four (cited as page eleven by NBC) of the manifesto, he makes references to John Mark Karrs (the man believed to have killed Jon Benet Ramsey), and Debra LaFaves (a teacher who had a sexual relationship with a 14 year old student). A reader at Hot Air also made this observation, which helps a little with when he possibly took these pictures:
Update: Mary K asks a good question in the comments:
[H]asn’t the roommate said Cho had started getting up really early every morning? If he was up at five, it seems to me he could have easily spent an hour or two filming in the common area of a suite without his sleeping roomies knowing.
If he did shoot the film on Monday morning, I bet that’s when he did it. Remember, though: NBC said the video clips were split into 27 separate Quicktime files and that the written document referred to each separate file at various points. That’s a lot of coordination and probably not something that could have been done between 7:15 and 8 a.m. (after the first shooting and before Cho’s roommate looked in on him) or 8 a.m. and 9:01 (after Cho’s roommate looked in on him but before he sent the package out). It seems strange to me that he’d be willing to film between 5 and 7, though, knowing that his roommates were in their bedrooms and liable to overhear him — and potentially intervene and stop him — before he could go out and start shooting. Plus, he’d already met one of them in the bathroom at 5 a.m. so he knew at least one of them was awake.
Update: Re: the manifesto, a reader e-mails to note that the backdrop in some of the photos (page 21) looks like striped wallpaper, not the painted bricks seen in most of the photos and video. Wallpaper was unusual for dorm rooms when I was in college, so I’m thinking maybe those photos were taken at his parents’ house.
We also have a bit of insight into what might have been going through his head in the run-up to the actual confrontation. Allah noted it late this morning that SKY News might have made the connection:
In the chilling video Cho also appears to re-enact scenes from a film detectives say he had repeatedly watched in the days leading up to the massacre.
The South Korean movie Oldboy has themes of obsession and revenge which also occur in Cho's own writings.
Allah has this to add for the explanation of "OldBoy":
Oldboy is the second part of Park Chan-Wook’s “Vengeance trilogy.” A hammer is the weapon of choice in a single take fight in the middle of the film. Preceding that fight is the teeth pulling interrogation scene with the same hammer…
The movie is South Korean, but I would imagine that anyone likely to go on a spree killing would have it in his netflix queue, along with Battle Royale, which is Japanese, but is reputed to be barred from wide distribution in a post Columbine US. I know that back in the day, my teen angst bullsh*t friends in HS seemed to know about every murder/vampire/weird indie movie out there. The internet probably negates the need to have friends now.
Did it send him over the edge? I doubt it, but the iconography may have resonated with him, resulting in the hammer photo.
The protagonist had been imprisoned for 15 years and was seeking vengeance against an unknown tormentor and wreaking havoc with anyone that stood in his way.
Remember that the Columbine killers emulated the final battle climax of "The Matrix" which spawned nutter outrage by bleeding hearts believing it was prompting people to act that way. Folks, if you have a problem separating reality and fantasy, you belong in a mental hospital, which we know Cho had been in back in 2005 by his own volition; it wasn't involuntary as was proposed yesterday by many talk show hosts and media nutters.
Matt Lauer and Meredith Viera noted this morning on The Today Show that many people that were supposed to be on their show this morning pulled out in protest and anger over NBC's glorification of Cho in airing snippets of his manifesto. They also stated that NBC wrangled over the idea of airing this stuff "for hours" before deciding that they felt "obligated" to help people understand Cho. BS; they did it for ratings, they did it to scoop the others, and they did it form the bottom dollar of notoriety.
You want to understand Cho, then get this through your head. He was a nut. He was severely, mentally disturbed, and believed that he was a victim of thre world around him. He had turned off all feelings for those around him, and looked at them with hatred and disdain. He felt nothing when he killed them. Witnesses describe him as silent and emotionless as he was on his rampage. Trying to understand him is a job for the professionals to sort out, and it's not the job of the media to provide that sort of insight. Their job is to report the news. NBC and other outlets last night could have reported that the manifesto was sent to Steve Capus, president of NBC News, and left it at that. But no, NBC decided to run with it. I agree with Marcie -- It was irresponsible of them to do that. She also cited two stories where copy-cats have apparently been arrested -- one in Florida and one here in Arizona. Could they have been prompted by the manifesto yesterday, or even the rampage on Monday? Maybe. I don't know. I don't really care what their motivation was, be it Cho's actions, or "commemorating" the Columbine masscre, but I can assure readers that NBC didn't do the public a service last night giving Cho more attention than what he deserves.
Publius II
I should note that Mr. Cho did mention 11 September, Osama, and Kim Jong-Il on page two of the NBC manifesto coverage. But it's not jihadist rhetoric (NOTE to readers, NBC has redacted the profanity in the manifesto):
"Are you happy now that you destroyed my life? Now that you have stolen everything you could from me? Now that you have gone on a 9/11 on my life like [expletive] Osama. Now that you have [expletive] your own people like [expletive] Kim Jong-Il. Now that you have gone on a hummer safari on my life like [expletive] Bush? Are you happy now?"
For all those out there still searching for an Islamic connect, you can call off the search. This isn't jihadi talk. This is rambling BS. He's not proclaiming his support for the animals we're fighting. Hell, he levels an indictment at Osama, Kim, and Bush. Folks, he hated the world he lived in, or at least how he perceived it to be.
On page four (cited as page eleven by NBC) of the manifesto, he makes references to John Mark Karrs (the man believed to have killed Jon Benet Ramsey), and Debra LaFaves (a teacher who had a sexual relationship with a 14 year old student). A reader at Hot Air also made this observation, which helps a little with when he possibly took these pictures:
Update: Mary K asks a good question in the comments:
[H]asn’t the roommate said Cho had started getting up really early every morning? If he was up at five, it seems to me he could have easily spent an hour or two filming in the common area of a suite without his sleeping roomies knowing.
If he did shoot the film on Monday morning, I bet that’s when he did it. Remember, though: NBC said the video clips were split into 27 separate Quicktime files and that the written document referred to each separate file at various points. That’s a lot of coordination and probably not something that could have been done between 7:15 and 8 a.m. (after the first shooting and before Cho’s roommate looked in on him) or 8 a.m. and 9:01 (after Cho’s roommate looked in on him but before he sent the package out). It seems strange to me that he’d be willing to film between 5 and 7, though, knowing that his roommates were in their bedrooms and liable to overhear him — and potentially intervene and stop him — before he could go out and start shooting. Plus, he’d already met one of them in the bathroom at 5 a.m. so he knew at least one of them was awake.
Update: Re: the manifesto, a reader e-mails to note that the backdrop in some of the photos (page 21) looks like striped wallpaper, not the painted bricks seen in most of the photos and video. Wallpaper was unusual for dorm rooms when I was in college, so I’m thinking maybe those photos were taken at his parents’ house.
We also have a bit of insight into what might have been going through his head in the run-up to the actual confrontation. Allah noted it late this morning that SKY News might have made the connection:
In the chilling video Cho also appears to re-enact scenes from a film detectives say he had repeatedly watched in the days leading up to the massacre.
The South Korean movie Oldboy has themes of obsession and revenge which also occur in Cho's own writings.
Allah has this to add for the explanation of "OldBoy":
Oldboy is the second part of Park Chan-Wook’s “Vengeance trilogy.” A hammer is the weapon of choice in a single take fight in the middle of the film. Preceding that fight is the teeth pulling interrogation scene with the same hammer…
The movie is South Korean, but I would imagine that anyone likely to go on a spree killing would have it in his netflix queue, along with Battle Royale, which is Japanese, but is reputed to be barred from wide distribution in a post Columbine US. I know that back in the day, my teen angst bullsh*t friends in HS seemed to know about every murder/vampire/weird indie movie out there. The internet probably negates the need to have friends now.
Did it send him over the edge? I doubt it, but the iconography may have resonated with him, resulting in the hammer photo.
The protagonist had been imprisoned for 15 years and was seeking vengeance against an unknown tormentor and wreaking havoc with anyone that stood in his way.
Remember that the Columbine killers emulated the final battle climax of "The Matrix" which spawned nutter outrage by bleeding hearts believing it was prompting people to act that way. Folks, if you have a problem separating reality and fantasy, you belong in a mental hospital, which we know Cho had been in back in 2005 by his own volition; it wasn't involuntary as was proposed yesterday by many talk show hosts and media nutters.
Matt Lauer and Meredith Viera noted this morning on The Today Show that many people that were supposed to be on their show this morning pulled out in protest and anger over NBC's glorification of Cho in airing snippets of his manifesto. They also stated that NBC wrangled over the idea of airing this stuff "for hours" before deciding that they felt "obligated" to help people understand Cho. BS; they did it for ratings, they did it to scoop the others, and they did it form the bottom dollar of notoriety.
You want to understand Cho, then get this through your head. He was a nut. He was severely, mentally disturbed, and believed that he was a victim of thre world around him. He had turned off all feelings for those around him, and looked at them with hatred and disdain. He felt nothing when he killed them. Witnesses describe him as silent and emotionless as he was on his rampage. Trying to understand him is a job for the professionals to sort out, and it's not the job of the media to provide that sort of insight. Their job is to report the news. NBC and other outlets last night could have reported that the manifesto was sent to Steve Capus, president of NBC News, and left it at that. But no, NBC decided to run with it. I agree with Marcie -- It was irresponsible of them to do that. She also cited two stories where copy-cats have apparently been arrested -- one in Florida and one here in Arizona. Could they have been prompted by the manifesto yesterday, or even the rampage on Monday? Maybe. I don't know. I don't really care what their motivation was, be it Cho's actions, or "commemorating" the Columbine masscre, but I can assure readers that NBC didn't do the public a service last night giving Cho more attention than what he deserves.
Publius II
posted by Syd And Vaughn | 12:50 PM
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