The Virginia TV Shooting and the End of American Exceptionalism

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

27 August 15

Today's events are a horrifying example of the way we live now.

've been away from my TV for a while, so can anyone tell me whether Wayne LaPierre has leaped to a microphone yet to explain that, if there only had been a .50-caliber machine gun or a Stinger missile mounted atop the camera when that guy exercised his Second Amendment rights in Roanoke this morning, the two murdered journalists still would be alive? C'mon, Wayne. It's time for your now-monthly argumentum ad dementum about our country's lunatic attachment to its firearms. A grateful nation awaits your wisdom. 

(The latest reports indicate that this was yet another case of workplace violence, albeit one that took place outside the actual newsroom. This will qualify the shooter for the NRA's coveted Mucko McDermott Human Resources Award.) 

A news crew, doing a completely ordinary happy-face morning feature at a mall get blown away on camera. If this had happened in Somalia, we'd have a lot of earnest talk about the dangers of a failed society. If it had happened in Syria, Lindsey Graham might liquefy entirely and disappear in a rush down a storm drain. But it happened here, in the exceptional home of American exceptionalism, so, once again, we will be told that Alison Parker and Adam Ward are merely more of the price we pay for the exceptional exceptionalism of a free society. 

(Google "reporter shot on camera" and, once you get past the massive coverage of this morning's barbarism, you'll be amazed at how often it happens. Or you won't be.)

Without naming the teacher, Barbour County Schools Superintendent Jeffrey Woofter credited her for maintaining control just when classes were about to change. Woofter also praised the local police chief for getting quickly to the scene and talking the suspect into giving up. The teacher talked the boy into not allowing the next group of students to enter the classroom. Alerted by those students, another teacher told school administrators, who then called 911. "The teacher did a miraculous job, calming the student, maintaining order in the class," Woofter said. The entire situation was contained in about two or three hours, police said. Meanwhile, the rest of the 724-student body was safely evacuated to the bleachers of the football stadium, where they awaited rides home.

Of course, hero teacher should have been strapped and the episode wouldn't have lasted so damn long.
           I mean, Holy Mother of God, this country's gone mad.