While the media, online and otherwise, unloads its collective nut on the faces of the public with their wall-to-wall coverage of the tragedy at Virgina Tech; I want to offer up a simple question, with a simple answer. The question is: Who is to blame for this? And the answer is: us. That’s right us. All of us, collectively and individually. We’re to blame every time we fail to see the mental health care crisis in this country. We’re to blame every time we see the “weird” guy and say, “it’s not our problem.” We’re to blame every time we bully a screwed up kid from another country, or look the other way when that kid gets bullied. We’re to blame every time we don’t reach out to the friendless loner. We’re to blame every time we feed the sick fucking profit-hungry media in the country with one more page view or Nielsen point. We’re to blame every time we care more about the drugs in that fucked up skank Anna Nicole Smith’s bloated corpse than the rampant over use of anti-depressants. We’re to blame every time the news reports that 33 innocent people were killed on a street in Baghdad, and we say, “we’re fighting them there so we don’t have to fight them here.”
All of us…you, me, everyone. We create the world that we live in. We can choose to make it a better place; or we can choose to wallow in the filth. All of us. We’re to blame.