Brian Williams: "This should be the best time of these kids' lives"

I cursorily watched a bit of some news about "the massacre", and this phrase hit me.

First of all, college students (unless they are a 17 yr old freshman) are NOT technically "kids". they are 18..and up..many are well into their 20s.

Insisting that any "weird kid" could be/should be/might be "locked away" or "taken" for mental care is totally unreasonable and probably illegal.

Probably the only real recourse a school has is that little application form and dorm contract that students probably have to sign.

There is, most likely, a clause in them that entitles the school to "remove/expel" students who do not comport themselves with standard rules of communal living.

The school no doubt could have expelled this guy, but chose not to. It was obvious that there were documented issues with him.

They CHOSE to look the other way.

The other thing about Williams' lamentation was his repetitive reminder to us that he too has a college freshman child. BFD..lots of people do. College Life for these "kids" is no more "sacred" than what many
"kids" their age and YOUNGER are undergoing in Iraq & Afghanistan. the only real difference, is that Brian Williams' "kid" did not have a future of crappy jobs ahead of him/her, and did not see the military as their ONLY option ..

or he has a very short memory. For most of us, those college years weren't much fun, going from job to job, going hungry, skipping sleep because there wasn't enough time between jobs to do homework, memorize, read, write papers, or work on projects.

And we were the lucky ones, having something besides being shot at in some corporate war or other or a life in a dead end job, just putting in time so we could go home to substandard housing and watch soul destroying crap on network TV.

50 yrs' worth of crushing debt :)

College Life for these "kids" is no more "sacred" than what many
kids" their age and YOUNGER are undergoing in Iraq & Afghanistan. the only real difference, is that Brian Williams' "kid" did not have a future of crappy jobs ahead of him/her, and did not see the military as their ONLY option ..

Agree 100%

Brian v Vinny
By Nancy Greggs

In a recent address to NYU journalism students, NBC’s Brian Williams bemoaned the fact that his hard-fought climb to the top of his field is now being undermined by "people who have an opinion, a modem, and a bathrobe".

Poor Brian, just another MSM child left behind in a world where the truth has found its internet voice, along with an audience that grows larger with every news cycle.

“All of my life, developing credentials to cover my field of work, and now I'm up against a guy named Vinny in an efficiency apartment in the Bronx who hasn't left the efficiency apartment in two years.”

How appropriate that right off the top, Brian was able to demonstrate his lack of journalistic integrity by presenting his own baseless assumptions as fact.

The truth is that your typical Vinny is an articulate, intelligent reporter; he could be a DC insider with political contacts, or a dogged researcher uncovering the very facts that the MSM deliberately ignores.

In all likelihood, Vinny has a successful career which affords him the time to devote to his avocation. Or maybe his blog has become so popular, it provides an income that keeps Vinny’s bathrobe collection as up-to-date as his late-breaking stories.

What really gets Brian’s goat is the fact that Vinny’s ever-widening audience consists of truth-seekers; intelligent, self-motivated people who have a wacky penchant for wanting the facts.

That’s a far cry from Brian’s followers, bored couch-potatoes who are willing to take his word for things simply because it beats having to exert the necessary energy to change the channel – or, heaven forfend, actually think.

Brian just doesn’t get it. Day after day, he serves his pre-digested, warmed-over, corporate-endorsed, nutrition-free pablum, and he wonders why the world is beating a path to Vinny’s Place, where the news is served pipin’ hot by a guy who probably doesn’t even have a personal manicurist.

Maybe Brian should use his alleged journalistic prowess to do an in-depth report on why Vinny’s rise to the top was so inevitable. He just might learn something.

Perhaps the biggest difference between Brian and Vinny is the simple-but-obvious difference between spin and fact. Vinny doesn’t have to check with his masters before reporting the news. He doesn’t have to weigh telling the truth against the possible impact on his corporate employer’s lucrative government contracts, nor is he required to couch his reportage in language that certain politicos will find palatable.

Vinny can just call a spade a spade, while Brian’s rewrite team spends hours determining whether the terms shovel, spoon-like scoop, or soil relocation device will convey the same meaning without ruffling any feathers.

Vinny’s biggest advantage is that he doesn’t have to make a fool of himself by presenting commentary that the public knows to be utterly ridiculous, and today’s top news story was a perfect case in point.

In the aftermath of the shootings at Virginia Tech, Brian had to blather on about how President Bush was once again uniting the nation during a time of tragedy.

Vinny, on the other hand, was free to state the obvious: Bush, whose approval ratings have taken yet another nosedive this week, showed up at VT in a desperate attempt to look like he cares – that’s the same Bush who wouldn’t interrupt his vacation while NOLA was left to drown, the same Bush who continues to send ill-equipped troops to die in Iraq, the same Bush whose corrupt administration is unravelling as we speak.

Vinny just tells it like it is. Brian has to tell it like he’s told to tell it – all the while knowing that the public agrees with Vinny’s view of things. No wonder Brian is so damned touchy on the topic.

And unlike the Brians of the MSM, Vinny has the ability to follow more than one news item at a time. While Brian repeats the same two or three facts of a breaking story like a human tape-loop, Vinny is commenting on a myriad of current happenings, continually updating as new details emerge. By the time Brian is allowed to move on to breaking story number two, it’s already old news to Vinny, who’s covered two dozen additional items while Brian was busy re-reading his lone cue-card for the zillionth time.

Brian has the on-screen graphics, the designer suit, the fashionable coif, the eye-catching set. Vinny only has the truth and a willingness to tell it.

While Vinny has never met a fact he wasn’t willing to share, Brian no longer recognizes facts that haven’t been folded, spindled, stapled and mutilated to the point where they have as much in common with the truth as Brian’s job has in common with journalism – somewhere between zero and nil.

Hopefully, NYU will invite Vinny to address their students next time around, instead of yet another mindless corporate shill, whining about the inherent unfairness of a news-hungry audience that has the audacity to expect him to deliver the real news.

As Brian has so cloyingly stated his case, he has spent his life "developing credentials to cover my field of work". In other words, he has chosen the politically-correct wardrobe, along with the politically-correct delivery, and he has the sponsors to prove it.

The Brians of the world might well ask what the country is coming to when the public demands news media integrity, and refuses to recognize the talent of someone who may not be a journalist, but plays one so well on TV.

Well, as Vinny would say in response, "Maybe what the country is coming to is its senses."

Go figure.

Nancy Greggs. Thanks Disturbed.

The 20s are horrible. Yeah...the best times all right...working full-time, taking classes part-time, driving 100 miles round trip each day, getting 3-4 hours of sleep every night, having anorexia/bulemia because of "image" expectations, squeeking by with Bs. Oh yeah, did I mention rape? That was fun...the best time! :eyes:

Press reports indicate that Cho had a hard time with debauchery and privilege among the college population.

He would have fit right in with the "spoiled college kids" stuff here.

I mean, it takes time to load clips, dress up, take photos, make videotapes. How did they not know that they were living with a mentally disturbed individual with violent tendencies? The roomates appeared to not enough seek out any basic information about an individual in close proximity to their residence, even if they weren't there the majority of the time.

At my college the administration would have forced him to take an indefinite medical leave of absence after the fire incident...

Stop giving mind altering drugs to children. Stop giving ritalin, which is created from illegal drugs and processed to be more 'legal' (which still messes kids up in the long run). Make stronger laws protecting the rights of children. Pay ATTENTION to them. Make laws which force parents to give children certain amounts of care and teaching rather than parking their beer driven asses on the couch and barking orders at them. Make laws which includes all children be subject to harmless, painless and relatively comfortable screenings by psychiatrists, take away the stigma that having a disorder is a death sentence to one's social life. Make Mental health more wide-spread, more affordable, and differentiate a psychiatrist who gives drugs from a psychiatrist who gives HELP and diagnosis...and require them become two different fields of work. Create actual laws, not school laws, against bullying and social humiliation on school grounds. Make the parents accountable for bullies as much as the kids. Give kids stronger rights to defend themselves, and have police be required to give certain levels of care to anyone under the age of 18 who they must apprehend, unless forced with a violent or otherwise life or death situation. Cut back on the belief that the only thing between you and a criminal is a gun. Emphasize good community, patron work and volunteering to be kind to others as opposed to shunning them as potential threats.

Guns would be a non issue if people in this country were treated like more than cattle. We're treated like the second we have a defect we must be taken away from the rest of the blind herd, lest they learn they too can be imperfect and taken away from the world where american idol and the MSM is all that matters.

To take back this country we need aggressive kindness...an ascertive empathy that can thwart the subtle hatred that's spread around. Why did they show the video of this person? Because this person is obviously very mentally ill. It's to perpetuate more unneeded hate towards the mentally ill so that more of this BS can spew and the country can be even further devided from systems which can genuinely help people.

For the record: anyone can do drugs and get drunk and act just as crazy. I've posted a few, questionable things on DU and other forums while under the influence of alcohol. The devide is only within us....every person is capable of being that way, but see too much value in the world around them and bettering their own situations to give into such crazy acts.

However, I think this particular individual surpassed mental health. I think he himself was a definition of evil. Even if it was computed with a 'crazy' mind, he computed it was okay to harm others because of his poor situation. You don't have to be mentally ill, and you don't have to be sane, to be able to compute it's wrong to harm others....some people simply like being that way (sadists, not mentally ill).

edit: spelling