In an age saturated with PC-ness, I regretfully (and am slightly afraid to) admit that I haven't.
I'm honestly not trying to be heartless, but I like to look at the whole, broad perspective. Is there this much media hype over the many more people killed every year on the streets of New York?
Out of the millions of children and teenagers who go to school, how many die in school shootings? There are probably more kids who die by being hit by lightning than school shootings.
This is the core of what is bothering me: why does the media value the lives of these victims over that of the people killed on the streets, or (I have to say it) the unborn babies slaughtered by the millions?
Don't think I'm saying that these lives lost are unimportant! I do think it's a horrible thing. By my aforementioned comments, I'm not trying to degrade the value of these high schoolers lives, but I'm instead trying to point out that the media has turned it from a tragic event into a human interest story. If they really cared about the lives of students, the suicides of every teenager would be national news. But, of course, that's ridiculously impossible, so the media has to pick and choose which stories are going to make people buy the paper and turn on the tv.... (I'm not a big fan of the media.)
In a way, I have to feel sorry for this kid who killed the people. He was teased and tormented to the point of murderous rage. That's pretty bad. Granted, I don't know the facts of this story, and nothing would justify murder. But this illustrates how powerful a cruel word or two can be.
What I said may be contradictory to my feelings about the James Bulger story. That's because I'm a hypocrite. I could put a positive spin on it, and say I'm a riddle wrapped up in a mystery, and no words in the English language fully justify the complexity of my thoughts. But that's not true. There's just a certain je ne sais quoi about little children that really tugs at the ol' heartstrings, and I can't help but be drawn to those type of stories....