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Subject: Denver shooting: Obama calls for unity -
As a geezer It’s hard for me to process the violence that is all all around us, some is called entertainment, some is called the war on terror, while this new lead story of violence brings our leaders together to call for America to “come together as a family”…
From a 2008 review of the previous Batman film:
“But the greatest surprise of all – even for me, after eight years spent working as a film critic – has been the sustained level of intensely sadistic brutality throughout the film.”
Dark Knight 2008
the film begins with a heist carried out by men in sinister clown masks. As each clown completes a task, another shoots him point-blank in the head. The scene ends with a clown – The Joker – stuffing a bomb into a wounded bank employee’s mouth. After the murderous clown heist, things slip downhill. A man’s face is filleted by a knife, and another’s is burned half off. A man’s eye is slammed into a pencil. A bomb can be seen crudely stitched inside another man’s stomach, which subsequently explodes. A trussed-up man is bound to a chair and set alight atop a pile of banknotes. A plainly terrorised child is threatened at gunpoint by a man with a melted face. It is all intensely realistic.
“I [make a] distinction between violence which is clearly fantastical in origin, such as that in Harry Potter, and that which is realistic and sadistic in tone, such as that in The Dark Knight.
The former might well bother younger children afterwards, and even give them horrifying nightmares – scarcely desirable in itself – but the latter is more likely to taint their fundamental vision of the world and adult norms of behavior…”
“As we do when confronted by moments of darkness and challenge, we must now come together as one American family.
-Barack Obama
And speaking of “intensely sadistic brutality”-
“There has been a great increase in US strikes,” said Muhammad Nawaz, a tribal elder in North Waziristan. “The people feel terrorised because we hear the drones in the sky most of the time.
Few children attend school because they fear for their lives walking to and from their homes.
The tribal elders are afraid to gather together in jirgas, as had been our custom for more than a century. The mothers and wives plead with the men not to congregate together. They do not want to lose any more of their husbands, sons, brothers, and nephews. People in the same family now sleep apart because they do not want their togetherness to be viewed suspiciously through the eye of the drone. They do not want to become the next target… ”come together as a family?
“I saw my father about three hours before the drone strike killed him. News of the strike didn’t reach me until later, and I arrived at the location in the evening. When I got off the bus near the bazaar, I immediately saw flames in and around the station. The fires burned for two days straight. I went to where the jirga had been held. There were still people lying around injured. The tribal elders who had been killed could not be identified because there were body parts strewn about. The smell was awful. I just collected the pieces of flesh that I believed belonged to my father and placed them in a small coffin.”
———————
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/2461820/Our-attitude-to-violence-is-beyond-a-joke-as-new-Batman-film-The-Dark-Knight-shows.html
From: The Trembling Voices of Those Terrorized by America’s Drone Campaign
http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2012/05/31/silent-trembling-voices/
“As we do when confronted by moments of darkness and challenge, we must now come together as one American family.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9414987/Denver-shooting-Obama-calls-for-unity.html
Wow, Anonymous, great post and a very proper connection made.
Yes, we are SHOCKED when violence comes to our door, but are rather nonchalant when we visit it upon the “others”.
The ugliness that we bathe in and call entertainment helps make us who we are. And who we are is then projected out into the world. But we can’t believe it when the hideous seeds that we have sown take root and make us hurt in the real world. Man, we love blood and gore, but we freak out when our regularly scheduled program is interrupted.
I don’t watch TV or current movies. On the rare occasion that I have seen a few minutes here or there, I am appalled at what we allow to be paraded before us on a regular basis. We’re screwed, and what happened in Colorado is exhibit A.
Oth, both the young man in Az. and this latest shooter, are at the prime age to be beset with schizophrenic paranoia. Why didn’t O call for ‘unity’ when Trayvon Martin was shot, instead of playing the race card ? And wth were at least two little ones doing in a midnight movie of such violence ?
Didn’t take long for the irresponsibility to begin: http://gawker.com/5927715/americas-wrongest-reporter-abc-news-brian-ross-demonstrates-yet-again-how-he-earned-the-title
I think it’s unreasonable to expect anyone who works for the Mouse to be a “journalist”.
I can’t stomach Obama waxing profound about the senseless taking of innocent life. As if his hands were clean.
Amen to that.
Agree. And how come more Americans aren’t outraged by zero’s kill list?
Indeed
Honestly, I’ve sat in movie theaters wondering why nobody had ever gone to the front of a theater and opened fire. Sad about this, but in no way surprised.
I think that’s the most succinct headline I’ve seen about the tragedy.
Best headline on this story to be found anywhere, John.
Just getting back to the news of the day. Some days I just can’t take it…
The number of people killed is comparable to a typical weekend on the South Side, including children. Has BO ever spoken out or even mentioned, this weekly tragedy ?
No, he hasn’t. But when he comes back *home* to Chicago, the police are doubled – tripled on the south side. Sometimes, they even make arrests.
I agree, your headline says it all
A question that my poor, dear, departed mother would consider heartless: What do you think this will do to the ticket sales for this movie? Will people flock to it in even larger numbers, or will they be afraid of a copycat and stay home? Or might they avoid it out of respect for those who died watching it? I wasn’t going to see it anyway so I can’t weigh in personally.
I think the media will soon tell us we all need to see the movie ” in honor of those who have fallen..and show we don’t allow violence to rule our lives “
Subject: Newsday Reviews: Mass Murder at the Mall
I hope no deranged individuals see this:
Headline: Tragically, James Holmes rises as a new ‘Dark Knight’ villain after Colorado shootings
After speaking with his counterpart in Aurora, NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly said that Holmes “had his hair painted red” and that the suspect had a new identity.
“It clearly looks like a deranged individual,” Kelly said during a press conference in New York. “He said he was the Joker, obviously the ‘enemy’ of Batman.”
Eyewitnesses said Holmes burst through the door of Theater 9 minutes into the movie with a gas mask on his face and weapons in his hands. He threw a gas canister into the audience, shot once into the ceiling, and began firing into the crowd.
The film’s Joker does love the drama of an explosion, such as the hospital scene plotted by Heath Ledger’s character in the previous film. The Joker was also a fan of the long-barreled gun in the 1989 movie, similar to one of the guns police recovered from Holmes’s car.
Scenes of mass chaos and public mayhem are a good portion of superhero films, and that’s precisely what Holmes meticulously planned. But this wasn’t merely planned – it was downright scripted.
http://www.newsday.com/opinion/viewsday-1.3683911/tragically-james-holmes-rises-as-a-new-dark-knight-villain-after-colorado-shootings-1.3850403