The “making fun of the pope’s death” thing was bad enough. But this week New York Press decided to sink even further, running a scummy little piece by Mark Ames in which he looks at the recent Minnesota school massacre and asks, “Was Jeff Weise's massacre justified?”
It shouldn’t be a surprise, since Ames is the same idiot who previously wondered aloud why more Americans don’t become suicide bombers, and- due in part to a phantom dispute with innocuous music writer Chuck Klosterman, has since moved to that noted capital of unabashed freedom, Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
Ames’ version of the Red Lake events is that Weise’s killing of 9 people, plus himself, should NOT be placed “on Jeff Weise’s evil shoulders,” but rather should be seen as revenge against historical oppression, by our culture, against American Indians. The shooter himself, therefore, is absolved.
Now I certainly in no way mean to downplay the great historical injustices perpetrated against Native Americans- being from Minnesota, I know it as a part of our state’s history that I was taught from an early age. But if Weise’s anger was with the “culture” that systematically slaughtered his people, then why did he then turn around and kill ten people, all of whom were part not of the “mass culture,” but were Native Americans themselves? And if Ames thinks this was Weise's motive, how come his only evidence is some postings that criticized Bush foreign policy?
The reason is of course, because Weise was a Nazi sympathizer, who frequented white-power internet sites and proclaimed himself in sympathy with the Nazis’ goals. Ames ludicrously says “the Nazi claim is the craziest of all,” but it's still true nonethless. And besides- if past oppression against Native Americans is a cause for justifiable homicide (against other Native Americans)- why aren’t there Indian reservation school massacres all the time? Last week's was the first I’ve ever heard of.
So in summary: Despite calling himself a Nazi and posting to Nazi websites, to suggest Weise was in fact a Nazi is "crazy." The massacre was completely justified, and Weise committed it in order to get back at our "culture" for oppressing his people, except his victims were not "our culture," but were his people. In not realizing this, the media is guilty of a "coverup." And while the senseless murder by a child of several other children and his own family members is not "evil," what IS evil is Tracy Flick, Reese Witherspoon's character in "Election."
The most offensive notion of all in Ames' nonsensical piece is that it's now a “progressive” and "enlightened" position to defend and make excuses for a self-proclaimed Nazi who committed mass murder.
(The Press, by the way, this week put out its smallest issue in the five years I've been reading it, clocking in at just 50 pages. Are the tranny-escort advertisers deserting them in droves?)
Posted by Stephen Silver at April 7, 2005 11:00 PM