Insane Fame

Cho Seung-Hui, anonymous in a world he hated while alive, is now a subject of universal interest and insatiable curiosity. We want to know every detail of his miserable life that led to the deranged murder of all those innocent people.

What comfort will those millions of words and images give us? What can we possibly learn from all that talk about an insane act? Why can't we grieve in silence and put it behind us?

In our media-saturated world, that's just not possible. For these few days, that bloody campus is and will be as much a part of our lives as the homes we live in and the places we work.

That may be the best evidence that we, unlike Cho Seung-Hui, are connected to one another in a human way that makes us incapable of doing what he did, and that may be why putting ourselves through all this is more than morbid curiosity.