Some days I cannot bring myself to behold the news. Heartbreakingly, today's is much like it was months ago–perhaps always has been–and most likely what it will be the next day. So, I flitted through the channels while jogging on the treadmill, landing on ESPN. To what avail, I ask myself. To see dopers, cheats and more dopers?

 But then something astounding happened. I saw something that made me smile, something that rekindled hope in my heart. No, not some overpaid primadonna handling a ball, but a kid in a wheelchair.

how cbc chose to cover the va tech shootings

"Several specialists in the field in both Canada and the U.S. argued that the media’s blanket coverage of these “crimes of notoriety” encouraged copycats by “glorifying” their act. They urged the media to reduce their preoccupation with the killers, their identity and their photographs — and not report “idle speculation” about their motives."

this is exactly what i said last week about the coverage and why i was no longer willing to watch mainstream news about it. it's nice to feel validated, but i wish it wasn't even a discussion.

blah.

i avoided writing about the va tech shootings for a few days now. i didn't have much to say at first and ray's post said more than i could have. but my parents are visiting this week and the combination has prompted me to re-think the on-going nature of the tragedy.

boingboing has had consistent coverage of the shooting — at least one or two really informative posts every day. this is where i have followed the story, as the posts come through my feed reader.

but yesterday, we went to exercise and the tv was on in the fitness room. and there, in all its glory, was fox news reporting. i had to turn my ipod up to ludicrous volumes in order to drown out the tv. but the images kept coming.

i don't want to see pictures. i don't want to watch the videos the shooter made. i do not need to hear his words.

we came back up and my mom asked to watch the nightly news. i forget — my news comes to me in a fairly steady stream throughout a day. my parents, on the other hand, still read the paper every night and still watch the nightly news. this is how they learn about the world. i turned on the tv for them and went into the other room.

i know i am not the only person responding this way. in fact, 'tv night' was last night and kurt, john, mike and brinker all came over. the topic of the shootings came up last night and both kurt and rachael said they too were trying to avoid coverage.

perhaps we are jaded. i think more likely it comes down to several factors: we all get our news online while at work. it also affords us a more balanced view of the facts that something like the nightly news. the second reason is simply because we have learned to avoid this type of news coverage. i know, for me personally, that after 9/11, i have refused to watch video of the towers. the horror and sickness that comes from those videos, from remembering that day, is physical, even now as i type this, i can feel my stomach tensing in stress. understanding something does not mean we have any obligation to make ourselves continually sick from it. it is gluttonous in the worst of ways.

there seems to be a general need to ascribe meaning to this act. people have come out of the woodwork, declaring gun control, video games, prescription drugs to be at fault. they point to previous issues the boy had, creative writing he had done, various ways the college could have attempted to prevent this type of thing from happening.

but there will never be meaning.

there will never be a single cause for what happened, no scapegoat, no culprit, no activity or decision that could have stopped it from happening. and the sad reality is that this will be the largest act of its kind only until the next one happens.

perhaps that is why i am not interested in finding a cause. why i don't want to hear any of his manifesto. the real tragedy lies in all things we are not talking about, in favor of trying to ascribe meaning to his acts. in favor of glamorizing him and the package he sent to nbc.

when horrific events occur, why do we, as a culture, as a society, not speak about the things we can change in ourselves, our lives? we did have a little of this dialogue after 9/11. perhaps this tragedy is not large enough to warrant such universal introspection.

but it is for me.

it's all i have thought about this week. how can i change my life to make a difference in the world? how can i make the world a better place to live? how can i help people? what jobs, services, knowledge can i provide to help other people?

no one should die in vain. but to plaster news about the shooter everywhere, all over the news, cheapens the victims. it gives the killer the attention he craved, the spotlight for which he worked. this is not how we remember those who were killed.

no one should die in vain. what better way to honor those we have lost than by striving, every day, to make the world a better place?

I picked up the phone today and part of me got bent sideways inside. My loving Grandmother, telling me to turn on the TV. That's hardly ever a good sign, is it?

And there it was.

It's been nearly a decade since I graduated from Virginia Tech, but nearly every picture was of a place I'd been before, walked across dozens or hundreds of times. That shaky cell phone video that's everywhere? I know that place. The blood stain on the sidewalk? I ran past there to catch the bus at Burress. And having had several classes in Norris, I think that might have been the room I had Calculus in one semester. My wife used to live in Ambler Johnston.

Amy said she was fighting crying today, that in some way it felt eerily similar to that day in September five and a half years ago. And I agreed on both counts. We're midway between being college freshmen and sending a child off to be a college freshman, and it lends a weirdness I can't really grasp. Knowing that we'd always kind of daydreamed of our kids going there, of retiring and living near there, and knowing now that in many ways it is inexorably changed.

I waver between being sadly numb and being pissed at "The Media." Following this over the course of the day, it's disconcerting to see how the story bends to suit the angle of the hour. How very like a feeding frenzy a press conference becomes. Thinking everyone must have foresight as keen as their hindsight, journalists dog officials about why the campus was not locked down after the initial incident. One went so far as to note that, hey, high schools get locked down all the time. And I suppose if you went to a small, liberal arts college for your journalism degree, you might not realize that with 30,000+ people, hundreds of buildings and thousands of acres, locking down that campus is aking to shutting down a small city. Did it eventually get locked down? Yes, but only after the arrival of every nearby police force, the ATF and the FBI to assist. But while you get that kind of response for mass murder, I don't think Steger would have gotten it for the first two, do you?

Sadly, I think Steger, who has been a good president for Tech, will end up losing his job for not anticipating what no one could have conceived of prior to 10am today.