The Santa Monica Shooter(s)

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/08/us/santa-monica-college-shooting.html

It's weird when it happens in your own damn neighborhood.

I'm not much for local news, I like to scale to a bigger platform with the limited time I've got in this overburdening world, but when I awoke this morning the number one topic of conversation was...

Obama.

Just like Santa Claus, he was coming to town.

Why?

To lunch at Peter Chernin's house. The entertainment bigwig. To raise money.

And that's what's wrong with America. The money in politics. As well as the firearms in the hands of nitwits, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

There were tweets warning me, expressing sympathy that I lived in the neighborhood.

Oh, not where Obama was lunching. But by Santa Monica Airport. Where he was landing. Right near my house.

At least that's what I thought at first. Until it occurred to me that Air Force One couldn't land in Santa Monica.

Turns out Obama was landing at LAX. But did he take a helicopter from there?

Not sure. But there were Sikorskys all over town. You know, those two rotor helicopters you see in the Vietnam movies. Maybe he was flying to Chernin's backyard.

But a cursory search of the Internet showed...

The streets by my house were gonna be closed.

Huh? I'm just trying to get home. And now I can't because the chief executive, instead of doing his job, is hobnobbing with Chernin and his folk, as if these bigwigs are entitled to an opinion, and be sure that that's what they're getting with their donations. You haven't got a chance. To paraphrase George Carlin, vote if you want to, I hope it makes you feel good, but it's the owners who run this country, and you're not one of them.

But they say the streets will be clear by 11:30 AM. And I'm not exiting my appointment until just before noon. It should be cool.

But as I'm driving down 20th Street, just by the freeway, a cop car comes speeding by. And then another.

And I'm thinking to myself that someone's gonna get hurt. They've got the gumballs on, but they're going really fast, and this is a pretty sleepy area.

But then came a copper on two wheels. And then an unmarked car going so fast...I was worried he was gonna hit me.

So when I got to Pico, I went through the alley to 21st. To get away from the fray. My original plan had been to shoot down 20th. To either go through Pearl to Ocean Park or cut through SMC to Bob's Market, where I wanted to buy some yogurt... It's always a minor endeavor when something bad happens. You're going out for ice cream. You're picking up your dry cleaning. Buckle your seat belt, most accidents happen close to home.

And now I'm driving down 21st and I get to Pearl.

I could draw you a map, but...

The north south streets increase in number as you go east from the beach.

And Pearl is the east west street parallel to and in between Pico and Ocean Park. And Santa Monica College, SMC, is at Pearl and 20th, on the northwest corner of the intersection.

So I'm now at 21st and Pearl. A hundred or so feet from 20th. And at 20th, by the college, all the cop cars have congregated. Maybe something serious is going on. I don't think too much about it. I go to Bob's Market and go home. To my life. To the Internet.

And my homepage is the Yahoo News: http://news.yahoo.com I used to use Google, but the computer curation missed stories, gave the wrong impression, so I switched to Yahoo and am staying there, even though Google now has human beings involved...it's hard to get someone to break a habit.

And I surf with multiple windows. I could have twenty open at a time, I rarely have fewer than five. So I'm home for about half an hour, and I open a new window, which means I'm confronted with the Yahoo News, and I see a breaking story. Three shot at Santa Monica College.

Huh?

There's very little information. The L.A. "Times" has a story. Every other site is copying it.

So I go to Twitter. Which is positively freaky. Because I'm seeing tweets from those at the school. They're right there right now.

For the uninitiated, I searched on "smc" and "santa monica college." Try it: https://twitter.com/search-home

And then I go back to the web, where I find a site that's posted a cornucopia of Twitter pics. Blood and everything.

And I'm searching madly for more info. And now they say they got the shooter in the library, and the three injured people were in a car.

Okay, domestic dispute, an argument amongst friends.

Your goal in tragedy is to make sense of it, to remove yourself, to make yourself feel safe. You try to explain it away.

But then comes the story that he fired shots on 21st Street.

Oh boy. That could have been me. That was my detour.

And then it comes out that the shooter was wearing body armor. And he stopped a car, shot out all the windows and...

Little details keep coming through. Is there a second shooter? I mean I don't feel scared in my house, but this is literally happening in my neighborhood!

They're still not sure if there's a second shooter. They've got somebody in custody.

And my mother calls, and I tell her what's going on. I tell her she's gonna read all about it in tomorrow's newspaper, she's addicted to the "New York Times." But as time goes by, I think not. It's a minor story on the "Times" homepage. Three people get shot and live, that's not big news. Then again, ever since Newtown any shooting gets airtime, as it should...we Americans should stop hiding our problems and confront them.

And as the afternoon wears on...

Obama's team is imitating Freddie Prinze, who not so ironically took his own life with a gun, saying EES NOT MY JOB! Yup, that's literally what they said, it's a LOCAL MATTER!

That's the best you could come up with? You couldn't even express sympathy? They went on to say this had nothing to do with Obama. Yup, it's got nothing to do with anybody until suddenly...you're right there!

Kind of like the '94 earthquake. I still haven't recovered. But if you didn't experience it, it's like it didn't happen. Kind of like Sandy. Kind of like...

Boston.

Those people were minding their own business.

And then you've got the press conference. It was a Yahoo headline. I clicked through to see a doctor saying nothing.

And then... There's a story about two people being dead in a house the shooter tried to burn down. There's an address. I look it up. That's a bad neighborhood.

Yup, you might think Santa Monica is tony, but in between Pico and the freeway... You wouldn't walk alone at night, you wouldn't even stop your car.

And the guy drove down Pico shooting away.

Huh?

And now there are six dead.

Strike that.

I just refreshed the link at the top. It's now seven.

And the helicopter is hovering, my house is shaking...

Oh, not Obama, he's long gone. The news. The vultures. There's nothing to see, but they've got to stay up there, disturbing the locals, so the bubble-headed bleach blondes can titillate the television viewers.

And I always think it's nuts when parents are afraid to send their kids to school after there's a shooting half a continent away, but I'm a bit numb.

But I decide to venture outside.

And I come across this:

pic.twitter.com/pFr0mADb6O

The mobile command center.

And there are orange cones in the middle of the street. And the gumballs are still going by Santa Monica College seven hours later. And I ask myself, what is wrong with us, how far have we come that these random shootings happen seemingly every week and there's nothing we can do about it because the gun makers need to do business and the rednecks need to shoot stuff.

Oh, I know it's a thorny issue.

But the cops don't have guns in the U.K.

It's America with the culture of violence.

And really, I'm less worried about random shootings. I'm more worried about the suicides, of people who bought guns for protection and then turned them upon themselves when they reached the limits of despair, or shot their loved ones in anger or by mistake.

So Obama's filling his coffers, innocent people are dead, and the rest of us shrug our shoulders and move on.

But not me, not tonight, because I WAS RIGHT THERE!

Where it happened the flash of light is by Santa Monica College. http://t.co/db9prl7Hf2

Orange cones in the middle of Ocean Park Boulevard. http://t.co/zhTjlDbkqQ


--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
http://www.twitter.com/lefsetz
--
If you would like to subscribe to the LefsetzLetter,
http://www.lefsetz.com/lists/?p=subscribe&id=1

If you do not want to receive any more LefsetzLetters, http://lefsetz.com/lists?p=unsubscribe&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25

To change your email address http://lefsetz.com/lists?p=preferences&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25




--
Powered by PHPlist, www.phplist.com --