A hero like Cho?
Radio news today had a story I think out of Ft. Smith, AR about an 18 year old HS student who wrote on his desk "I want to be a hero like Cho."
What he is now is in jail charged with making terrorist threats. He said to police (through an interpretor so apparently he doesn't speak English) that he meant to erase the statement before leaving the desk but he forgot.
I don't know what language he speaks, his ethnicity or country of origin, or his legal status in this country. Not 100% sure but I think I heard the name "Tam" which sounds Asian to me.
Are a bunch of Asian immigrant kids now going to idealize Cho and his actions?
What he is now is in jail charged with making terrorist threats. He said to police (through an interpretor so apparently he doesn't speak English) that he meant to erase the statement before leaving the desk but he forgot.
I don't know what language he speaks, his ethnicity or country of origin, or his legal status in this country. Not 100% sure but I think I heard the name "Tam" which sounds Asian to me.
Are a bunch of Asian immigrant kids now going to idealize Cho and his actions?
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The copycats are breeding. I am surprised we haven't had another one yet? Thank you news media.[:(!][V][:(!] 0 -
Yes it was irresponsible for NBC to broadcast the footage and photos of this sick young man.
It is fodder for the copycats, and the copycats are watching it right now.0 -
If he doesn't speak English, I wonder what language it was written in? And, if it was in some language other than English, I wonder who read it?
Kids are worrisome these days!0 -
Many people are literate in other languages but cannot converse in them.
My wife can read and write German, French, Spanish, Latin, Greek and Italian but doesn't speak any of them.
This kid likely wrote the message in English but maybe his spoken English wasn't good enough to allow police questioning.0 -
quote:Originally posted by SaxonPig
Many people are literate in other languages but cannot converse in them.
My wife can read and write German, French, Spanish, Latin, Greek and Italian but doesn't speak any of them.
This kid likely wrote the message in English but maybe his spoken English wasn't good enough to allow police questioning.
Maybe so. If his English skills are so weak, I wonder if he knew for sure what he was writing?
I'm sure he did, but it does raise a question.0 -
"I want to be a hero like Cho."
Fine by me - let's cut to the chase and put one through that thick skull of his right now.0 -
quote:Originally posted by ElMuertoMonkey
"I want to be a hero like Cho."
Fine by me - let's cut to the chase and put one through that thick skull of his right now.
That seems a little bit contra-first-amendment. Let's just put him in a padded room for a while. Plenty of kids go through disturbed phases - most authors, poets, musicians, philosophers, and so forth have been through dark areas. The solution isn't to kill them, it's to guide them.
But if they step off the path and won't come back, maybe then we can do something more drastic.0 -
Sounds to me like a kid sort of thing to do: dumb, insensitive, outrageous....isn't that what teenagers do?
When I was in high school I'd have been severely chastised for such a thing. Today it's a terroristic threat and warrants criminal proceedings.0 -
Just make sure his name shows up on the NCIS list, and move on. 0 -
ZERODIN- The 1st Amendment isn't absolute allowing one to say anything and everything. You can't yell "fire" in a crowded theater and you can't say you want murder students four days after the worst school shooting in history. Doing so is making a threat and that's not protected speech. 0 -
quote:Originally posted by SaxonPig
ZERODIN- The 1st Amendment isn't absolute allowing one to say anything and everything. You can't yell "fire" in a crowded theater and you can't say you want murder students four days after the worst school shooting in history. Doing so is making a threat and that's not protected speech.
That is an absolutely true statement, and everyone needs to understand it.[^]0 -
It's misguided at best. It's not a threat of the type that's unprotected. Who is threatened by this? Up next, go to jail if you are a misguided teenager who has the mere thought that you would be famous if it had been you.
Many of the things said on this forum are far more threatening to far more specific targets with far more imminency than this kid's writing on his desk. He needs psychiatric help. He does not need a bullet "through that thick skull of his."0 -
quote:Originally posted by SaxonPig
You can't yell "fire" in a crowded theater
Actually, yes you can.....
"Shouting fire in a crowded theater" is an expression that refers to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.'s opinion in the United States Supreme Court case Schenck v. United States in 1919, and which is used to express the limits upon which free speech may be expressed under the terms of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.
Holmes, writing for a unanimous majority, ruled that it was illegal to distribute fliers opposing the draft during World War I. Holmes argued this abridgment of free speech was permissible because it presented a "clear and present danger" to the government's recruitment efforts for the war. Holmes wrote:
The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic. [...] The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.
Holmes wrote of falsely shouting fire, because, of course, if there were a fire in a crowded theater, one may indeed shout "Fire!". Falsely shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater, i.e. shouting "Fire!" when one believes there to be no fire in order to cause panic, is not protected by the First Amendment.
Schenck was later overturned by Brandenburg v. Ohio, which ruled that speech could only be banned when it was directed to and likely to incite imminent lawless action (e.g. a riot), the test which remains until this day. Some now see the Schenck argument to be mistaken, contending that pamphleteer was more like yelling fire outside a building to prevent people from entering than it was trying to encourage people to stampede out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_theatre0
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