Amy Bishop: D&D made me do it.
Apparently the shooter at Alabama was embroiled in the dark and dangerous world of… Dungeons and Dragons.
Since this is an ivory tower academic, it couldn’t possibly be because she was just a sociopathic nutcase academic who thought of herself as a member of the intellectual elite. Or maybe the gun just did it by itself. No, had to be the D&D.
I look for Tam to start shooting up the folks at Whole Foods because she can’t get any of her favorite Hummus. She does, after all, have a close affiliation with polygonal dice.
No, wait, Tam won’t do that, because she’s not a FLAKY ACADEMIC.
You see, shooting up a conference room, or a 7-11, or a K-Mart, or god forbid a daycare center, doesn’t have anything to do with the availability of GUNS. It doesn’t have anything to do with a propensity for PLAYING ROLE PLAYING GAMES or listening to Alice Cooper or smoking dope or drinking too many mai-tais. It has to do with you being an OUT OF CONTROL WHACKJOB.
And Academia is lousy with them.
Speaking of academics, here’s one I actually LIKE!!!
16 comments Og | Uncategorized
Look at those people who want to ban guns under the impression that when someone sees a gun laying on the table or finds one under the couch bunting, his or her first reaction would be to fire away, then aim and apologize. They all project their feelings around guns, since they’d be the first to do this. Like reefer madness, but with guns.
Maybe because they’re nuts, or maybe like some guys did when they first had alcohol available to them after basic in the Army once they got to their duty station, after a lifetime of a teatotaling upbringing demonizing alcohol, that they’d go wild with the new freedom and get drunk every night, and these gun banners, if allowed to the range, would go ape-shit and shoot everything but the target downrange. And lose their bowels.
When I see a gun laying there, it’s the same as seeing a crescent wrench, a channel lock, a Leatherman Tool. For them, it’s like seeing a venomous snake coiled to strike, with its own will to overpower them.
Wow! How long has it been since this old “let’s blame our actions on a roll playing/video game/comic/book/movie/tv show” chestnut was last used?
Surprised the “evil gun” defense wasn’t in play as well (though I guess you would have to say it was at least subtly hinted at or implied).
Yeah, I have to agree with Og, this gal was a nutcase, and as such chose the course of action she did. But of course we must be understanding and compassionate toward those whose grip on reality is tenuous at best. And who knows maybe D&D did play a part …
Nutjob rolls 20 sided die; “Do I continue to act in a rational/normal way or do I give in, following the ‘advice’ of the many voices inside my head?” *Shakes die, rolls a 1* “Damn, guess I listen to the voices!”
Then again, maybe she had a real “hard core” DM.
But to blame a game, a show, a book, a magazine, a movie, for your actions is at best the sign of a weak mind, and at worst a convenient excuse for a sociopath to ply their trade.
(Aside: I only mention Tam because she has publicly admitted to having played RPG’s. Had there ever been an attractive woman in the vicinity when a RPG was being played, I might have gotten more involved; unfortunately the only women I ever saw around card tables in basements among the detritus and snow tires were 400 lb heifers with thicker mustaches than mine who were most definitely not interested in ME.)
This broad was a total and complete nutjob. With or without D&D.
She needs a quick round placed just behind her ear and get it all over with.
Definitely failed her fucking SAN check.
Her actions have nothing more to do with her being an academic than her playing with polygonal dice. She’s either evil or insane. Lock her up in an institution until she’s dead. If she’s evil, hopefully it will be a very short institutionalization.
Trust me, Wasp, there are more of these whackjobs in Academia than anywhere else on the planet. But it’s not causality, it’s coincidence.
Kind of reminds me of the ol’ Flip Wilson line…..
“The Debil Made Me Do It”!!
What bumph.
Bob
III
To be clear, I am not “dissing” Tam. (and apologize in advance if that was the impression given). Both Deb and I have not only played the “pencil and paper version” of the game, back in the day, we enjoy at least a couple of computer variants, in all their video goodness, in the here and now.
That being said,(and getting back on the topic) Dick gives the best answer/solution to this wasted piece of human excrement. One well placed round takes care of the whole thing.
“But to blame a game, a show, a book, a magazine, a movie, for your actions is at best the sign of a weak mind, and at worst a convenient excuse for a sociopath to ply their trade.”
Nailed it.
Does this mean Tam is a crispy (non-flakey) academic… or a flakey non-academic?
Tam is neither flakey nor academic.
Re, academia:
I won’t go so far as saying that it was the musty library stacks and heated debates in the freshman seminars that MADE that woman or anyone else nuts, but the academic venue for her nuttery and the subsequent shooting is no coincidence, either.
Academia is like a warm petri dish for nutcasery. Craziness flourishes there because it is several notches less firmly connected to realities than the rest of the world. Frinstance, thoughtful observers in the real world have known ever since 1923 or so that Communism is a dystopian fantasy that doesn’t work. In the late 1980/early 90s the catastrophic failure of the Soivet Bloc made this obvious to even the most impenetrably dense people in the real world. But in academia, you can still find not just isolated professors, but in fact entire departments teaching Marxist Social Justice and Stalinist Pedagogy for the Oppressed.
I have a feeling that if Professor Bishop had had to try and make a go of it as a convenience store clerk or making coffee at Starbuck’s, she would have had some decisive encounters with reality and wound up in section 8 housing with her own case worker to make sure she stayed on her meds. Her psychopathery would have come under adult supervision and heavy meds in the bud, so to speak, rather than being encouraged to seek its maximal growth and fullest expression.
Role-playing games and Alice Cooper?
I represent that.
Og, when you mention “Tam” and “RPG” in the same sentence, all I can envision is a lot of very nervous tank crews (and monsters).
Academia attracts nutjobs like honey (and excrement) attracts flies, and within its web of positive-affirmative action laws and academic regulatory minutiae they are cosseted and protected from the cold wind of actual life – as alath points out.
How TehWorld outside actually works and functions is of no real consequence to the denizens of the Perfect University compared to the Departmental fiefs and ivory towers of the Academic Feudal system under which they operate.
They are already playing an elaborate version of D&D where Presidents and Provosts are Royalty, Deans are Barons, Department Heads are Knights and Lords – and the students are serfs who’s main actual purpose is to insure the continuation of The Forever Holy Sacred Pearl – Tax-Exempt Status. Compare an Academic org-chart with a Feudal one and you’ll see all the commonalities of purpose.