Leave it to the
National Review to publish the single worst, dumbest, meanest, most cancerous possible "opinion" article on the murder of 20 young children and seven other people a half-week ago. No really,
class effing act, guys. It's not quite the call for more schoolyard George Zimmermans that the Tea Party Nation crackpots
came up with, but let's just take a look at what passes for Serious Actual Conservative Thought on the whole
mass murder of elementary school children business. Presenting your hostess in this episode of retch-inducing victim blaming,
Charlotte Allen:
There was not a single adult male on the school premises when the shooting occurred. In this school of 450 students, a sizeable number of whom were undoubtedly 11- and 12-year-old boys (it was a K–6 school), all the personnel — the teachers, the principal, the assistant principal, the school psychologist, the “reading specialist” — were female. There didn’t even seem to be a male janitor to heave his bucket at Adam Lanza’s knees. Women and small children are sitting ducks for mass-murderers.
Stupid women and children, why are you being women and children? You're practically asking for it. Oh, except that (1) there was a male adult there, the school is a K-4 school so there were
no fifth or sixth grade boys to man up an hurl themselves at the insane AR-15 armed killer, and the male adult that was there
was, in fact, the goddamn janitor, so every part of the stupid premise presented here is factually damn wrong, as could have been deduced if anyone on the
National Review staff bothered to
look it the hell up already.
But no matter, the worst person ever here is on a roll!
(Continue reading below the fold.)
Some of the teachers managed to save all or some of their charges by rushing them into closets or bathrooms. But in general, a feminized setting is a setting in which helpless passivity is the norm. Male aggression can be a good thing, as in protecting the weak — but it has been forced out of the culture of elementary schools and the education schools that train their personnel. Think of what Sandy Hook might have been like if a couple of male teachers who had played high-school football, or even some of the huskier 12-year-old boys, had converged on Lanza.
Classic stuff. Just classic. And again; no "huskier 12-year-old boys" were present. The male and female teachers were a wee bit more concerned with moving their children out of the line of fire, locking classroom doors and blocking access then wandering through the building seeing if they could maybe use their advanced tactical football training to take out the crazy murderer with the multiple guns.
Cops and everybody else encourage civilians not to try to defend themselves when they are criminally assaulted. This is stupid advice. There are things you can do. Run is one of them, because most shooters can’t hit a moving target. The other, if you are in a confined space, is throw things at the killer, or try a tackle. Remember United Flight 93 on 9/11. It was a “flight of heroes” because a bunch of guys on that plane did what they could with what they had. They probably prevented the destruction of the White House or the Capitol.
"Run" is what they did, when they could. "Try a tackle" is what the little five-year-olds did
not do, because they were goddamn five-year-olds. But never fear, I have confidence that if those kids thought the murderer was going to try to seize control of their elementary school and fly it into the Capitol, they would have all done the patriotic thing and taken that guy
out.
Parents of sick children need to be realistic about them. I know at least two sets of fine and devoted parents who have had the misfortune to raise sons who were troubled for genetic reasons beyond anyone’s control. Either of those boys could have been an Adam Lanza. You simply can’t give a non-working, non-school-enrolled 20-year-old man free range of your home, much less your cache of weapons. You have to set boundaries.
Well, point effing noted,
National Review. You can't just let your mentally deranged son murder you and take your weapons, people—you have to set
boundaries.
You have to say, “You can’t live here anymore — you’re an adult, and it’s time for you to be a man. We’ll give you all the support you need, but we won’t be enablers.” Unfortunately, the idea of being an “adult” and a “man” once one has reached physical maturity seems to have faded out of our coddling culture.
Hear that, you no-good feminist moms? What the crazy violent people among us need is for good parents to kick them out of their house and tell them how they should go be a "man." Stupid feminists, keeping the Adam Lanzas of the world from being "adults."
What's impressive about this, let's call it "article" is that it manages to be either factually wrong, fantastically insulting or outright delusional in every single paragraph. In just a few hundred words we're told that (1) it's the women and children's fault for not having enough manly menfolk around to come block bullets for them, (2) those damn sixth graders who were technically not actually at the school should have hurled themselves at the shooter like he was John Elway and they were, well, a pack of husky six-year-olds, and (3) you have to set "boundaries" on your clearly mentally incompetent children by not letting them murder you, but instead demanding that they leave the house and become productive members of society.
That requires a standing ovation, that one. Congratulations, National Review, you've managed to put up the single worst, stupidest response to the Newtown shootings of any supposedly "serious" group anywhere. Give yourselves a damn medal for that one.
