Who Gives a FUCK?

“Who gives a FUCK!” I screamed, not once but three times, at the top of my lungs in my car, with the dogs in the back. Who gives a FUCK! The last word reverberated. I want to continue yelling. Right now. I’m yelling it. Who gives a FUCK! If my neighbors were home, they’d call the police. The dogs, now in the back yard, are afraid of me. They are cowering by the door.

On NPR, one of this morning’s stories was a brief blurb, which said, essentially, that on several news stations, the shooter who murdered Virginia Tech faculty and students was referred to with his name in a particular order. They played four clips (maybe more—my mouth was agape in disbelief), each from a different station. “On NPR” and other stations, the announcer said, “you heard this,” and it was followed by four more sound bytes with the shooter's name in a different order. Listeners wanted to know why the order was different, she said, and then she explained about given names and family names in Korea, about Americanized versions, about which version the shooter used.

How many times does that name need to be repeated? Even if you want to give a lesson in culture, you don’t do it by repeating the name of a mass murderer ten times in a 60-second news segment.

I don’t think our media can get any lower. And, unfortunately, about that I very much give a fuck.