I wasn't going to say anything. Everybody knows about Monday's tragic events at Virginia Tech. You don't need to hear about it from me. But there is something I feel compelled to speak about, and that is the Media's exploitation of events of this nature, particularly CNN and their ilk. I already considered CNN to have become little more than a 24-hour tabloid channel. I recently started to jokingly refer to CNN's initials as standing for Celebrity News Network, rather than it's proper meaning. Hell, it took this tragedy to get CNN off of Anna Nicole Smith for more than an hour.

First of all, is it absolutely necessary to take your crew and all your top TV personalities into this community that is trying to cope with this tragedy and just set up camp right in the middle of campus? I know if this had happened in Boone when I was living there, I wouldn't consider TV lights and cameras as an aid in dealing with the loss. Get out of there and leave those poor folks alone.

Second, what is the news media's obsession with seeking vengeance? They immediately start looking for people to throw under the bus other than the person who actually perpetrated the crime. "Did the University do enough to warn the students?" "Why wasn't he expelled from school when his mental problems were documented?" and my personal favorite, asked to the head of VT's counseling program: "How did the University lose track of a killer?" The guy did nothing wrong, before Monday, that would get anyone kicked out of school! Are counselors also psychics? Why would they keep "track of a killer" when he wasn't even a killer until years later? The university didn't help him plan and carry out this crime, get off their back. But, what really made me, and everyone watching with me, laugh out loud was this. Just minutes after spending over an hour pointing fingers at everyone from the university police to the counseling program, they showed a bit of footage of Cho speaking of his anger at the world. Then Paula Zahn comes on with an incredulous look on her face and says, "Here's Cho actually trying to blame this on everyone but himself". We laughed out loud because that's exactly what Zahn had been doing for the past hour.

So, while this community, and the entire nation, is trying to make sense of and deal with this event, here is CNN stirring the pot, exploiting our fear, and implying that universities and or the government isn't doing enough to protect us from these completely random acts of insanity and violence. They're nitpicking insignificant details in order to try to spread blame around where none belongs. They keep interviewing the teacher that had him removed from her class because he scared her, as though the university should've automatically known right then that they should get rid of him because he'd become a gun-toting madman. The teacher keeps telling them that if they kicked out every student who wrote angry, disturbing, or weird things in their creative writing class, there would be a lot of empty campuses. She keeps telling them that these campuses are filled with thousands of people and that in any population that large, there are going to be suicides, and mental problems, etc, and  they can't just kick out all the troubled kids. And she's right. They keep poking and prodding her, asking her leading questions like, "How on Earth did he become a Senior?" Get a clue. Also, consult some psychological experts based on their expertise, rather than how photogenic they are.

I'm reminded daily why I don't watch TV.