dagblog - Comments for "The Hero Fantasy"

Our store was in kind of a

Anonymous — Mon, 24 Dec 2012 04:08:32 +0000

Our store was in kind of a rotten neighborhood and was robbed by a gunman

In the 30's, had you been living in Cicero, Illinois , the hometown of Al Capone, you wouldn't have been robbed, because people feared, what Capone's gunmen would do.

It was reported that you were safer in the town of Cicero.

In regards to prohibition and overturning the law, depending on what side you were on,

Capone was considered a hero by some.

Oh this is what you were

Richard Day — Mon, 24 Dec 2012 03:15:57 +0000

In reply to Wayne La Pierre plays

Oh this is what you were talking about.

hahahahah

Wayne La Pierre plays

erica20 — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 20:55:16 +0000

In reply to Isn't fantasizing about

Wayne La Pierre plays Shooter, the Nutty Elf.

Filthy, filthy, filthy.

erica20 — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 20:06:45 +0000

In reply to Isn't fantasizing about

Filthy, filthy, filthy.

Isn't fantasizing about

Michael Wolraich — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 19:47:16 +0000

In reply to The Hero Fantasy

Isn't fantasizing about killing people as away to get your kicks really the filthiest form of pornography?

-- Wayne LaPierre

The reality is that almost 1

DF — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 20:01:28 +0000

In reply to Mea culpa. Gun lover is a

The reality is that almost 1 in 2 adults owns a gun in America today. Either the country is composed of 50% gun nuts, or the liberal stereotype needs to be heavily revised - at least if people want to make actual progress on these issues.

Nicely put. It's weird

Orion — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 09:43:49 +0000

In reply to The Hero Fantasy

Nicely put.

It's weird enough that this guy imagined saving us from some armed burglar. He imagined it so much that he articulated it to me. He knew it was never going to happen so he mentioned the possibility, out loud in front of his wife and kids and wanted me to validate his fantasy. His wife was, by the way, pretty freaking embarrassed.

Here's an Oregon State Representative who fancies that were he instead a Newtown teacher, allowed to carry his gun, that many lives would have been saved by his heroics.

This is all fairly natural adolescent thinking. When you grow up with comic books, action movies and old stories about heroes who win the hands of their loves by defending their honor, such fantasies are likely to crop up in young minds. And maybe some youthful thoughts and impulses never really leave us.

This is a really incredible article, Michael. I have a friend in Pennsylvania who is a big gun collector. His family all had them and when I mean they had guns, they really had guns. AR-15s - stuff they would never need outside of patrolling Kandahar.

Said friend is actually the sweetest guy on earth. He wouldn't hurt a fly. He's really conservative, of course. Why does he have all those guns? I don't know. There was a point of pride in having them when the government didn't want them to (a "big government" thing, of course), I think. There was also the hunting element - but hunting didn't really explain the need to have weapons built for warfare.

Meanwhile, the phenomena you

artappraiser — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 06:03:36 +0000

In reply to The Hero Fantasy

Meanwhile, the phenomena you are talking about, of being a hero or saving people, certainly does not seem to apply very much to what we are learning about the Newtown attack--

this Hartford Courant piece from yesterday seems to have a lot of good details on the attack itself from "law enforcement sources"

No, that's not a hero, that's the dangerous evil guy fantasy of video games, he's not trying to save anybody, he's doing a "kill them all!" And I can't get away from thinking how alike it sounds to "dark knight" James Holmes, who is now being treated in hospital for banging his head against the wall.

I may finally be apologizing to Tipper Gore, changing my mind somewhat about violent video games and music. I used to pooh-pooh this because my two-closest-in-age brothers as kids "played army" like maniacs, visualizing battles in their heads, screaming aloud in their beds, for hours and hours. And they both grew up not wanting anything to do with violence or war except for hunting (the worst of the two on playing army won't even do that.)

But maybe, just maybe, the world of video games etc. highly affects those with certain mental defects concerning reality? .....I wonder what Tipper's opinion is now, especially as mental health was another one of her favorite causes...

As to Lanza's story, we may never really know; the Hartford Courant article says he really did a number on his computer hard drive, sounds like it will be a miracle if the FBI can get anything off of it.

P.S. I am dying to say that culturally, Quentin Tarantino and his ilk has got a lot of 'splaining to do! Massacres = awesome has become something a bit more than tiresome in our culture...Got me thinking how shows like Queer Eye for the Straight Guy helped bring about more acceptance of gays, mho; so maybe some enterprising producers and directors (any playwrightsout there as well? ) can come up with a new viral meme:: massacres = not awesome? or in video games: massacres: you lose!) No coincidence that Ms. Wampole, the essayist of the link in another of my comments upthread, is a professor of literature? But in the end, it all gets absurd, because I guess I am talking about art targeted to the mentally disturbed?

Just ran across now, appears

artappraiser — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 04:22:11 +0000

In reply to The Hero Fantasy

Just ran across now, appears to be--er, how to say it? highly provocative?--on topic:

Guns and the Decline of the Young Man by Christy Wampole

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/17/guns-and-the-decline-of-...

All through college I

artappraiser — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 03:48:34 +0000

In reply to The Hero Fantasy

All through college I waitressed in a Sicilian restaurant favored as an "after hours" joint by barkeeps, club and restaurant owners, waitresses (and show people from time to time.) And one got to know many of them by getting invited to after-after-hours parties once in a while. Seemed to me like all the moronic twerps with attitude (with, yes, I would say, penis inferiority complexes) packed, and all the attractive, confident macho men of the street didn't bother. Just mho. (Also too, that was waaaay before gangsta rap and when the only video game was PacMan, both which it could be argued, changed things some. ) Mr. Quentin Tarantino has always reminded me of every twerp I met back then, one of them even shared his last name.