Tuesday, April 24, 2007

CHO: IT WAS THE EROTOTOXINS

Still wondering about the reason for the Virginia Tech rampage? And other school shootings?

Well, wonder no longer. Over at WorldNetDaily, Dr. Judith Reisman explains it all for you:

Cho's erototoxic addiction

...So, what are the common factors shared by most recent mass school killers?

Start with a boy who will never be a football hero or homecoming king.
Place him in a society drenched in sadosexual arousal as entertainment.
Toss in some family troubles of a trivial and/or serious nature.
Bring him to a local video game arcade to painstakingly perfect both a killer's attitude and aim.
Sit him at the Internet every night, angrily lusting after naked young blondes who provoke his loins.
Give him psychiatric drugs for his depression -- drugs known to facilitate violent behavior.

... The killer's poetry professor Nikki Giovanni said his poems revealed someone engaged in ''a personal violation … objectifying his subjects,'' doing things ''to your body parts."

Giovanni was describing erototoxins -- pornography.

...Law enforcement needs to collect and report all the information on killer addictions to violent video games, erototoxins and medications. Our mass media needs to stop celebrating mass killers and pandering sexual violence. Our universities need to stop pandering pornography. Our medicine men need to stop prescribing drugs likely to cause vulnerable users to violence.

...Meanwhile, a major lawsuit waits in the wings if Virginia Tech has been a pornographic/erototoxic tolerant environment.


Wow, that was easy. It appears we have a one-size-fits-all solution: All we have to do is ban porn, video games, and SSRIs and we'll never have a school shooting again. All school shooters are troubled losers who become porn-obsessed gamers on prescription drugs. Evidence? Who needs it? This is perfectly obvious!

Just another right-wing kook spouting nonsense, right? Well, as Max Blumenthal reported a couple of years ago, Dr. Reisman is not just any right-wing kook:

... in recent years she has found herself kibitzing with the likes of GOP senators and Bush administration officials.... this November she provided expert testimony on Capitol Hill for Republican Sen. Sam Brownback on the scientific perils of pornography. There, she also lobbied for the reintroduction of a bill that would mandate an investigation into her claim that Kinsey sexually abused children during his research. Through friends in the Justice Department, Reisman has helped push for an increased focus on prosecuting porn. And she is a favorite speaker at conferences of the Abstinence Clearinghouse, a federally funded non-profit which provides technical assistance to controversial abstinence-only programs in public schools.

... The Abstinence Clearinghouse, advised by members of conservative Christian groups like Focus on the Family, Concerned Women for America and Coral Ridge Ministries, is funded in part by the Department of Health and Human Services. As the spearhead of the abstinence-only movement, its primary task is to design and disseminate curricula to public schools which administer abstinence-only courses....


(I'm amazed that Bush hasn't actually appointed her to a government job. Then again, he still has 21 months.)

Obviously, there was a sexual component to Cho's pathology -- he was a sexual harasser and (as Reisman notes, correctly) he was said to photograph female classmates' legs with a camera under his desk. Reisman is right to say that this behavior should have been taken more seriously by the university. But what evidence do we have that that was the cause (rather than just one more symptom) of Cho's problems? Or that his sexual behavior would have been any different in the era before easily available Internet porn?

****

(Oh, and if the "erototoxin" obsession and the Tom Cruise-like aversion to pharmaceuticals isn't enough kookiness for one essay, Reisman also argues that killers like Cho are "de-stigmatized" by being called "shooters." Hunh? Who on earth has a better feeling about Cho when he's referred to as a "shooter" rather than as a "killer"? This is as nutty as the right-wing crusade to replace "suicide bomber" with "homicide bomber." Right-wingers, I don't know where you get the notion that people have very different responses to these expressions, but you're imagining it. Please -- get help.)

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