Team Spirit

A million years ago when he was still funny and neither shilling for discount long distance nor flying the rightist flag, Dennis Miller knew how to make a good point. I am reminded of this because of the slowly settling sadness as a result of the Virginia Tech slaughter and the victim’s identities are brought to the public’s attention. Let me explain the connection.

On his brilliant Off-White Album, he espoused:

"If you're so lost or tormented or in pain that the only way for you to deal with it is to take it out on some innocent defenseless child, well, you've simply got to kill yourself. You've got to lean in over the plate and take one for the team. And you'll earn big karma points, believe me. Once you get to heaven, you can tell God, 'Y'know, I was gonna do that kid, but I thought about it and blew my brains out instead.' 'You did?' (mimes God affectionately grabbing the guy around the neck) 'You little mensch, you! Here's some Yahweh noogies for you'"

And he was right.

The gunman, Cho Seung-Hui, is now living up to our clichéd expectations with an emerging history of being the troubled, picked-on kid. His psychiatric hospital visit and harassing transgressions are pieces of a puzzle of which we already know the finished result. The bizarre behavior, antisocial tendencies and violent writings were an ominous foreshadowing of things to come.

It doesn’t take a bloodbath to remind us there are some severely unhappy and mentally unstable people out there. Get yourself some help, and if that doesn’t work, the first order of business is to make friends with a bullet and take a nice, permanent dirt nap. We’re not going to miss you, so just step aside and let the rest of us who can cope with the harsh reality of life carry on. It doesn’t matter how you choose to do it – suck on a tail pipe, dine on a bottle of pills, hold your breath and count to dead, practice your triple gainer off a building, or wrap your lips around a shotgun like a big black cock of death --just get it done. Because truly, whatever your message is, you’ll have at least some credibility if you lipstick it on your bathroom mirror and hang yourself with a belt instead of concocting a rant and using the innocent blood of others to get it across. Seriously, kill yourself. You’ll be doing everyone a favor.

We now return you to your buffet of dick jokes and bitter observational humor.