In the news

Two stories today, and my reactions to them:

1. Semi-locally (a town in N. Texas), there have been reports of people throwing rocks or something at cars. Windshields were damaged. This made the news possibly because one of the town's school buses was hit while children were on it, and children-in-perceived-danger makes the news faster than anything.

I am wondering: is this some idiot copycatting the story out of Michigan - reported yesterday - of some delinquent kids throwing stuff off overpasses, and they wound up killing a man? Because if so, that's really stupid and again evidence why stories like that should not be glamorized.

It also makes me a little afraid to go places where I have to drive under overpasses. This thing happens periodically: I remember a spate of it in the late 70s/early 80s in and around Akron when my dad was commuting there. It IS a scary thing because you have no control over it - Oh, I suppose if you see someone standing on an overpass and it's a low-traffic time you can get into a lane away from where they are or something.

But to me, it also highlights the worst in humanity: why would someone do this? It's not like stealing jewelry, where you gain the jewelry. The only gain is the "rush" of danger and damaging property and I can only assume the people doing it don't think of the people in the car as people....because I think if you thought of them as people, you wouldn't want to wish harm on them, which is why you're throwing junk off an overpass in the first place.

Anyway. I guess the kids in Michigan are being tried as adults? I'm hoping it sends a deterrent to other kids who might do that, though I also suspect the secret here is "parental support and supervision" - my brother and I would not have done stuff like that because our parents would have stopped us, even when we were of an age stupid enough to think that throwing stuff at cars was "victimless."

(I can only hope that in a lot of these cases, the person is ignorant/self-absorbed enough that they think it's a victimless crime, that it won't hurt the other person. But as someone who had a window smashed by vandals when her car was parked somewhere....even that's not victimless because of the effort of getting the window replaced (and the cost, though that was borne by my insurance company, and my insurance didn't go up, presumably because there was no way I could have prevented it)

But this kind of thing makes me sad because I see it as symbolic of people "othering" others - seeing them as not-human, or less-than-human, and therefore deserving targets of the brick or the rock or whatever. The person who was killed was someone's son, someone's husband. I don't like wishing bad feelings on people but I hope the kids who did that realize that - and that other kids who might do such a thing think of that.

2. The brother of the Las Vegas shooter has been arrested for possession of child pornography.

My guess is, were it not for the "infamous" hook of his brother, this would be a local story at best. In the past ten to twelve years here, five or six people have been arrested on at least suspicion of this, and the story never went beyond local.

(In fact, I remember the consternation felt at my university, when a disgruntled former employee of IT "vandalized" a number of BlackBoard courses, including one someone had put up while out on maternity leave. The police kind of shrugged and said, "There's nothing we can charge them with. Now, if they had child porn....")

I don't know if this story is being thrown out for mere sensationalism, or if it's a "look this whole entire family is bad" kind of story, but either way it annoys me, because it seems like misdirection from news that actually might affect us.


I am also annoyed at the seeming inability of my state legislature to come up with a budget plan that doesn't in some way violate the state constitution (You'd think legislators would have at least a passing familiarity with it) but that's an annoyance coupled with sadness/fear as I look at my own budget and worry about being able to afford a ticket home at Christmas.

Some days it really does feel like the only "adults" out there are the ones who are quietly collapsing under the heavy loads they carry every day, and you never hear about them in the news.