discussion section and respective walls 'o text

my homie por vida melissa from SF wrote me a rather well thought-out response to my previous post. if you didn't see it in the comments, here it is:

I'm having a hard time connecting all of the dots. It would appear that while Nikki Giovanni is our ultimate target, you also are drawing a parallel to your own run-in with a crazy Korean- sort of the "I was there, too" approach. Interesting how in your rant Seung Cho is given some type of validity while Joe is referred to, at the end, as the 'retard'. I'm not quite sure what makes one or the other - maybe you could clarify?

As far as Seung Cho and Nikki Giovanni both writing 'inciteful' poems, I think you're detracting from the chain of events. Certainly Nikki Giovanni is being interviewed all over town- she's far more eloquent than many of the people I've heard coming from VT and she has a degree of understanding that most on the campus don't, being one who worked with Seung Cho not just as his professor in a large room, but also as a tutor (I didn't have any professors willing to tutor me at university-but I digress).

I suppose what I'm trying to hack away at, in the end, are two things; the first being your title and the second being the basis for your title which of course is the comparison between Seung Cho's muddled and very adolescent play and Nikki Giovanni's concise call to black amerikkka during a time of incredible turmoil. In the end Cho decided (on whatever level that he was capable of doing so), to write a manifesto of sorts about himself and his experience with the world around him - a tricky subject matter indeed as it requires the reader to look deep into the text, assume the position of the writer's mind and infer what he wants us to infer.

How is this different from Nikki Giovanni? Well, first it's important to note that you omitted the title of her poem "The True Import of Present Dialogue, Black vs. Negro (For Pepe Who Will Ultimately Judge Our Efforts). The title alone speaks to the time in and context for what Giovanni was writing about- Black people in this stupid ass country still being called 'negroes' and being sent like lambs to fight whitey's war (and there really can be no arguing whether or not Viet Nam was anything other than a white-man's wet dream). In this poem, Giovanni is angry with her fellow black men for their seeming lack of action. She seems to say, 'How could you pick up a gun for the white man, but not for your own community?" She's not inciting her inner rage and calling for an indiscriminate killing of the honky menace, but she is inciting thought.
Seung Cho's plays were, again, sophomoric to be sure, but what Giovanni claimed was frightening wasn't his plays. It was his actions in large groups of people and the ways in which he tried to force his work onto non-accepting students. Nikki Giovanni was published and distinguished and anyone could choose to ignore her work or to read it. According to Giovanni however, Cho wasn't interested in giving people that option which of course amounts to intimidation and coercion.
You or I, dear Louis, would probably laugh a little uncomfortably at the poor sucker trying to ram his poetry down our throats and we might choose not to be intimidated. (But you and I are far superior to the rest of the wasted masses-again I digress).

Perhaps Nikki Giovanni is guilty of not understanding Seung Cho's text. I'd say the media is indeed guilty of shortening both his words and Giovanni's words - simplifying two incredibly complex people and spinning them like plates around our saturated brains.

I'd definitely change the title. Thanks for the read.

love always,

Melissa (Pit Crew, TEAM LOUIE)


my sad response here:
melissa. thanks for the response. as promised in my own response to your comments posted on my blog, i'm writing a rebuttal on yours. as per the title to the email i wrote you, i don't deny that i'm not an asshole, BUT let me clarify a few things before i get more involved here: (1) i don't feel any sympathy for Seung Cho. the dude was an asshole who murdered a bunch of people against whom he seemingly had no vendetta or reason. even if he did, i wouldn't feel bad for him. (2) i don't feel any affinity with him because of he was Asian and was rightfully roasted as a mass murderer by any normal thinking media outlet, nor do i fear any potential racial backlash by other assholes who can't think for themselves. any sort of backlash based on race or nationality, be it 9/11 as a prominent example, or Cho's rampage at Virginia Tech, is ridiculously stupid, and usually a product of other (usually drunk) morons, themselves feeling a twisted, misguided sense of cosmic justice. (3) the title of Giovanni's poem was indeed named on the post i made last night. in fact, i made a point to show the entire poem, sans edits unlike Steve Sailer's post on his blog, which ended with the line we got to show we can kill. i don't think i ever said she was advocating mass murder, but if i did, i would have been mistaken. however, i do believe that in the examples i wrote about, her work would stand out to most every day Americans as more troubling and disconcerting than Cho's ridiculously forced lines a la "Must kill Dick. Dick must die" etc. (4) the title won't change, even though you believe it should. if i were an asshole then, then i should be an asshole now.

the original intent of it all was, as i wrote in my comment to you on my site, to ridicule the alarmist nature to which media has ascribed to Cho's writing. of course, in the light of this discussion, that point was somewhat lost, probably between 3 and 3.15am last night. nikki giovanni is not, you are correct in pointing out, the big problem here. however, the issue i have trouble with is i don't find her to be all that trustworthy of a narrator, so to speak. the same goes for the student who supposedly claimed he knew Cho would be someone who would come in to class and start shooting. like i said in my rant, hindsight is 20/20. by nearly 98% of accounts, including his family, his roommates, his teachers, Cho had no friends. he never spoke to anyone. he was highly limited in classroom or even social discussion. to say that he imposed a massive, intimidating presence in the classroom on other students to me is not believable. as related to what you said yourself, people could choose to read his work or not, believe in it or not, give it a failing grade or a passing one. Giovanni herself is not, to me, a believable character. the facts are i haven't heard anyone made much of an effort beyond offering him $10 to talk, a degrading and condescending act that probably should have gotten the offerer punched in the face.

what i'm not saying is that if he were able to express himself more eloquently, like say how people describe Nikki Giovanni, this whole thing could have been avoided. i'm deliberately not joining in the media frenzy of finger pointing (Old Boy, the signs were all there in the writing etc.). but to some degree i do believe that people like Peter Sotos, Dennis Cooper, and even Bret Easton Ellis, would be a lot scarier to be around if they weren't so articulate and creative. Cho chose his road as a grown man, though possibly a disturbed one. He might have chosen another given a certain set of circumstances, but by all accounts he seemed to want to remain in his own world, and there weren't many attempts to pull him out of it. personally i don't consider recommending he be instated in mental institutions or removed from your classroom particularly helpful.

As i wrote before, Giovanni was right. Maybe she got lucky (or unlucky, as it were). Now she's reaping the fame that comes with being right, stepping up and being a spokesperson for VT and its Future. but i find most of her comments, however eloquent, to be somewhat disingenuous and based on her own 20/20 hindsight. i believe only in her distaste for Cho prior to his rampage, the evidence of which is seething in her comments. Should she be lionized for it? i don't think so.

again. thanks for the discussion and the comments. maybe we should talk about the hearings that involved the supposed heroism of pat tillman/jessica lynch next. you pick.

mkl

ps. the intro with my old roommate was purely anecdotal in the sense that i didn't have the energy or desire to return to him, except let my friends know what fucking douchebag i once lived with.

pps. i didn't know how crazy he actually was when i gave him the acid.