Jezebel: northern illinois university

Don't You Wish The Government Could Be More Like A Buddy Movie?

Moe — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 18:30:49 EST

"I wish they could run together...they'd be like one of those old 1970s cop shows. The crusty old seen-it-all guy who goes by his gut, partnered with the brilliant rookie who's got courage to match his brains." That's an undecided voter, in a piece on the "dude vote." [Salon]
Didn't think there was a blog post dedicated to likening potential Obama running mates to the white halves of cherished buddy movies? Think again! [Delicious Ghost]
The massive power outage in Florida today was not, somehow, the work of radical Islamic terrormongers! [Miami Herald]
Hillary Clinton, who is still running, defended a man accused of raping a 12-year-old girl in the seventies and may have made some shit up about how the girl was prone to fantasize and seek out older men that turned out not to be true. [Andrew Sullivan]
The Pakistani election: bad for Uncle Pervy, but good for transgendered dancers. No, truly! [WSJ]

"Hopefully, our school won't just be remembered for this, but I think it is going to be a long time...I had never really heard of Virginia Tech before it happened there. We're part of history, sadly." [NY Times]
Kids today are dumber than ever. [USA Today]
Coincidentally, they ALSO appear to be getting more materialistic! [BBC]
Also coincidentally, adults are growing more populist! [Politico]
I want to have his babies of the day: Richard Branson, who chugged a glass of jet fuel at a press conference to announce Virgin's use of biofuels in its jets to reduce emissions. "My god, it was horrible," he said. Next he'll be sampling dirt cookies! [WSJ]
We won't be liveblogging tonight's debate but we know someone who will. [Wonkette]

Do School Shooters Snap Because Of A "Crisis Of Masculinity"?

Jessica — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 09:30:00 EST

Following last week's massacre at Northern Illinois University, which left six people dead and several more wounded, pundits across the nation have been looking for the easy explanation. Why did the sweet-faced 12-year-old pictured here grow up into a mass murderer, mowing down several innocent people and then himself? UCLA professor of education and "cultural critic" Douglas Kellner thinks that former NIU grad student Steven Kazmierczak went berserk because of a crisis of masculinity. In his book, Guys and Guns Amok: Domestic Terrorism and School Shootings from the Oklahoma City Bombing to the Virginia Tech Massacre, Kellner argues that American boys are suffering from feelings of alienation, and in a culture that glorifies hyper-masculinity in the form of violent video games and movies, the school shooters "attempt to resolve a crisis of masculinity through violent behavior."

Kellner's argument sounds suspiciously close to the "Boy Crisis" hysteria plastered all over the media about two years ago: Articles upon articles lamenting the lack of academic achievement amongst boys and claiming that classrooms were hostile to the male gender. In an article debunking the "boy crisis" in the Washington Post, Boston University journalism professor Caryl Rivers and Brandeis research scientist Rosalind Chait Barnett said, "Obsessing about a boy crisis or thinking that American teachers are waging a war on boys won't help kids. What will is recognizing that students are individuals."

And Illinois school shooter Steven Kazmierczak was an individual. He didn't fit the school shooter archetype like Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho did — Kazmierczak wasn't really an alienated loner. Yes, he was quiet, but his live-in girlfriend, Jessica Baty, tells a different story of the 27-year-old than you'll hear from N.I.U. officials and various TV news talking heads. In a tearful interview with CNN, Baty explains: "The person I knew...was not the one who did that. He was anything but a monster. He was probably the nicest most caring ever." Baty explains that growing up, Kazmierczak spent time in a group home and at times had cut himself. She also said that he had been on Prozac for anxiety and OCD, but stopped taking it because "it made him feel like a zombie." In the days leading up to the shootings, Baty didn't notice anything alarming. "NIU officials were wrong when they said he was acting erratic," she said.

So what's the takeaway from this heinous occurrence? Sadly, there's no easy explanation for why Kazmierczak did what he did. UCLA professor Kellner suggests stricter gun control laws, and that's a start. What turns a seemingly sweet and quiet guy into a mass murderer, though, isn't something that can be solved through legislation or sweeping, gender-based generalization.

School Shootings The Result Of Crisis Of Masculinity, Gun Culture, Professor Argues [Science Daily]
The Myth Of 'The Boy Crisis' [Washington Post]
University Shooter's Girlfriend: 'I Couldn't Believe It' [CNN]

Earlier: Campus Shooter Was Off His Meds

Dark Matter, Light Reading!

Moe — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 18:45:50 EST

"'Please leave me alone. ... This is a very hard time for me,'" he said as he threw his arms up and wept. WSJ]
Dark Matter, a Meryl Streep movie about an Asian campus shooter delayed following the Virginia Tech killings, is finally set to be released. [WSJ]
We have 11-year-old sex offenders in this country now. [MyFoxDFW]
And Kimora Lee Simmons Barbies. [NY Mag]
What happens when a pharmaceutical sales rep copies and pastes the Match.com profile of a Harper's writer? A somewhat awkward date! [WSJ]
Too. Fucking. Sad. [LA Times]
Oh my GOD and if you think that is bad you won't BELIEVE what's happening to this critical American industry. [NYT]
Hillary and John McCain had a vodka drinking contest with Hillary when the two were in Estonia a few years back but Barry Hussein asked for his shot glasses to be filled with water. Islamofascist! [NY Times]

US Weekly made an awesome slide show of celebrity couples of yore, including that woman Patrick Dempsey married that one time and Tom Cruise and Heather Locklear. [Us]
"In a rare display of political hypocrisy, a longtime Republican lawmaker has resigned today after child pornography was found on his computer." [Wonkette]
Whither Texas? Uh... [Slate]
Barack Obama has a lot of money and John McCain doesn't so John McCain is trying to get Obama to agree to some pinko income distribution scheme that he purportedly agreed to a long time ago. Socialism's a bitch, Barry! [NYT]
"And no I'm not a regular reader of 'Jezebel.' I got this link from Defamer. I swear." [The Weekly Standard]

Campus Shooter Was Off His Meds

Moe — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 12:00:07 EST

"There were no red flags. He was an outstanding student. He was someone who was revered by the faculty and students alike," the Northern Illinois University police chief is saying of the 27-year-old grad student Stephen Kazmierczak, who yesterday walked into a packed geology class, swung open a guitar case full of guns and began shooting them at students before turning one of them on himself. The only motive thus far? He'd been on some meds, but he'd recently gone off them. What no one seems to be pointing out is that Kazmierczak wasn't a current student at the school, and so even if Northern Illinois hadn't responded to last year's Virginia Tech massacre by vigilantly following up on every scrawling of iffy graffiti, rooting out every aggressively antisocial kid, re=examining its "protocol" for handling armed suicidal maniacs, no one could very well get canned for this. Which is the sad thing about random, flourish-heavy never-saw-it-coming acts of violence: the resultant meaningless panicked scurrying around to make sure no one sues the school always manages to eclipse the glaringly obvious violence you could like totally see coming.

For every classroom full of kids stunned by their first sounds of real gunfire — "It was like little explosions," one student said — there's a classroom way fuller of kids in a neighborhood that looks like something straight out of The Wire, and a support group full of soldiers' wives who can't get the Army to keep their husbands from beating them, folks for whom those "little explosions" are just like your buzzing refrigerator or whatever the soundtrack to everynight life. I know, I know, boring, but why oh why doesn't anyone ever bother the connection, even rhetorically? That when you can't make sense of an act of violence, let it remind you of those you can make sense of?

"No Red Flags" Before Campus Shooting [Washington Post]
Steve Kazmierczak Profile
When Strains On Military Families Turn Deadly [NY Times]

"It's The Only Thing That There's Just Too Little Of" = Kind Of An Understatement!

Moe — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 18:40:56 EST

UPDATE: The Northern Illinois University shooter killed five people, including himself. [WSJ]
"I will be haunted to the end of my days by what my child has done." That's the mother of Latina Williams, who killed herself and two classmates Louisiana Technical College last week.
And in other senseless death news: 82 middle school-aged kids have died playing a "choking game" whereby, uh...[CBS]
Aaaaaaaah! CALLING THE FEMINAZI BONERKILLER SQUAD: A woman referee was walked off a Kansas high school basketball game and barred from officiating. Because she was a woman. Fun irony: The school is named St. Mary's. [Kansas City Star]
New Mexico finally finished counting its caucus votes: Hillary Clinton won by 1,700. [Wonkette]
But her campaign is fucked: Mark Penn is to blame! [Time]

Or maybe it's Patti Solis Doyle. Her chief advantages were "loyalty and discipline" (and "little else"); and the fact that Hillary supporters expected a few phone calls from Bill to quell all influential black peoples' interest in Obama; or that Solis Doyle fibbed brazenly about the sorry state of campaign coffers; or that Obama's team knew better how to raise money from non-gazillionaires; or something about Doritos... [Atlantic]
Britney Spears has a 30-year-old brother, and he's been named a trustee to her trust. [TMZ]
"More Than A Feeling" writer Tom Scholz says Mike Huckabee's persistent covering of the songs at political events has caused him "damage." [Rolling Stone]
Mitt Romney is endorsing McCain! Yeah who cares. Mitt Romney's Catholic spiritual adviser is telling our whole fucked up guilty flock of sinful sinners to vote Obama. [Slate]
Tonight is going to be fucking depressing if I end up watching Lipstick Jungle.