Pat Oliphant for December 20, 2012

hollywood is the major problem.

Not being able to write cursive is a form of retardation?Golly.Wish I had know about that before I started to type everything.

Got one right this time

‘Kids today’ are NO different than they ever were. Their diversions are different, that’s all.

the Liberal Hollywood culture is to blame for the glorification of violence in TV and movies. Its a shame the media does not hold them accountable.

Use my word processor on my computer.

Great!!!!!!!!!

Unable to write cursive?

Good heavens. Next you’ll be telling me people eat without wearing a dinner jacket.

Savages.

Use my iPad, my iPhone, my iMac or grab a pen/pencil and some paper.

Haven’t used a typewriter in years. Pens or pencils still work just fine.

That is not true. I suggest you Google Dunblane School Massacre, Erfurt Massacre or simply do a search on “school shootings Europe” for a start. Then move on to the rest of the world. The difference is that the United States has had far more of them, but it is not the only country to have experienced them.

Gee, I thought it was the public school system that was “educating” us.

That’s different….

Actually, Rupert Murdoch has come out for controlling weapons of mass murder, so it will be interesting to see how the Fox News pundits who work for him handle that. The New York Post just put out an editorial on gun control significantly left of the New York Times. I’ve never seen Mike Huckabee look more cruel and irrational as saying that God killed those kids because we don’t have organized Christian prayers in schools. I’m not sure he has a future in the mainstream media any more.

Note to sysadmins: the “About Pat Oliphant” block on this page needs updating.

JmcaRice: Yeah, blame those liberals like John Wayne and Clint Eastwood, or farther back, Klansman DW Griffith.

That theory works as good as any. Those video games are awful. My adult sons were playing one and a bad guy or 2 torn a woman in half! My husband plays those games and has terrible nightmares. Seems like people love to play gruesome games. Can’t be doing anyone any good.

I see where Pat Oliphant is coming from (my cursive handwriting has degraded to the point that I can’t read my own signature, and I am unhappy with America’s apparent obsession with violence), but I do not agree with the entire message. I don’t think America is illiterate, and I don’t think the inability to write in cursive is a bad thing.

Sadly, I think you have hit the nail on the head. And none of us are blameless.

I am so sad at the pessimism expressed over our younger generations.

Cursive handwriting is nearly obsolete. You can’t hardly find a good buggy whip maker anywhere these days either.

Apparently, your sarcasm failed. Nice try.Other “First World” countries don’t have these attacks nearly as often as we do because it’s much harder for someone to get weapons powerful enough to do it.

Kids in Europe & Japan play the same video games & watch the same movies, yet they don’t grab their parents’ guns & go on killing sprees. Maybe it’s because their parents don’t have guns!

How I wish this were hyperbole, but I fear that it is not.

Yup, there’s trouble right here in River City…

Hate to be the voice of reality here, but the real problem is the government’s refusal (since Reagan) to fund health care for the mentally ill. Cheaper to just dump them on society. And we now see the results of that policy, but it’s still easier and less expensive for the pols to mouth off about gun control than do anything that might really heolp the situation. Bunch of hypocrites, but what else is new?

The right need to put down their guns and support mental health care; the left need to quit making violent media and marketing it to kids. The right need more compassion and the left need more common sense.-At the end of the blame game, it will still be true that some people are just bad.-Can I ask (as if I needed premission ;-): Why isn’t the National Guard brought home where it belongs and used to help keep schools safe and the borders secure?

heard one conservative politician wanted to arm the teachers. the same teachers that the conservatives say are scum of the earth, lazy, incompetent, stupid, drain on society, etc…and, they want to arm them?

It appears cartoonists are just as dumb as politicians. The cause was mental illness, Asperger’s Syndrome, and a severe lack of professional help for parents or sufferers. We have an autism spectrum epidemic that needs public attention.

Google is an interesting tool. Use it and search for things like “school shooting Canada” and you find the Canadian school shootings— “school shooting England” or “school shooting UK” gives you the shootings there. In fact, school shootings happen worldwide, even where guns are supposedly unavailable.

So, cursive is more difficult to use, even if quicker. My problem is that I have effective tremor (in the "good old days, called “senile palsy”!). Even my uncial has a legibility expectancy of only about a half hour. But it hasn’t given me any urge to load up my flintlocks and go shoot someone.

“There never has been a school shooting in another country…”

There have been — the difference is that when it occurs in other countries, they do something about it. We haven’t figured that out yet.

Ah, the smell of cordite in the morning! #But, wait, hasn’t this been the GOP agenda for the past 20 years or so: “Devolve the electorate into a nation of illiterate zombies. Unable to pen a simple sentence. Unable to write in cursive form. Unable to vote for any but GOP candidates. Spending all our time playing increasingly violent video games and trashy movies. And, of course, acquiring all the most powerful assault weapons and loads of ammo!”#Why are we so surprised when obscene tragedies like Newtown CT happen?

Remember what Wayne LaPierre said in his blame-the-victims-for-not-being-armed official remarks as head of the NRA: guns don’t kill people, videogames do.

Special effects makes things too real.

@ those who mention the Dunblane shooting in the UK (Scotland, actually)…. the consequence of that was a national handgun BAN in 1997 throughout the UK, the shooter was a licenced holder, but now although licenced holders can still have rifles/shotguns, there is a total ban on pistols…. only the criminals have them.Condolences to the victims BTW; you cannot legislate against the criminally insane.

Future Ceo’s and Politics in Zombiland

Some self-righteous folks can illicit incredible violence with a pen as a weapon of choice. It can incite every bit as successfully as any video game. Pots love to put the blame on kettles.

Voice of reason may not prevail, but if it did, we would realize that first of all, banning guns will NOT prevent these types of assaults. I would be all for gun control IF IT WOULD WORK, but it won’t. Cowards like this punk do not do their crimes in states with concealed weapons permits. Instead, they take advantage of well intended, but ineffective, gun policies.

I’m tiered of hearing everything being blamed on movies, TV, video games and liberal media. What ever happened to responceable parenting, controlling how much and what your kids, watch and play. To many parents are taking the easy way out and letting their kids do whatever they want, as long as it doesn’t disturb them, then when it comes back to bite them in the ass, they want to blame everybody else, and take no blame for their own.