AND HE SAYS HE'S CLUELESS: I should just use my blog as running commentary on Steven den Beste's great posts, or something; here's another one on the latest going postal incident today, except that this time the gunman was tackled before the police got there. Steven asks: "Has the ghost of Kitty Genovese finally been laid to rest?" I think most people thought the don't-fight-back mentality was rooted in eighties hostage crises where you were supposed to negotiate with the terrorists who wouldn't kill you if they got what they wanted --Leon Klinghoffer notwithstanding. But Steven is putting the origin of a passive American attitude in response to people trying to kill us way back in 1964, which is pretty plausible, in my opinion. Not that I'm one of those blame the sixties for the erosion of American moral fiber types, but that era did begin a long period of the national psyche judging itself pretty harshly. Anyway, my answer to Steven's no-doubt-rhetorical question would be: well, yeah, by the passengers of Flight 93. Fighting back is in vogue. It's a better response than that "she said yes" thing that probably didn't even happen. I mean, would everybody have been hiding in the library at Columbine if it happened now? Maybe, but maybe they would've thrown books at the gunmen.

COMICS SIDENOTE: I first heard of Kitty Genovese in Watchmen, it was part of Rorschach's origin.
OPERA SIDENOTE: I first heard of Leon Klinghoffer from reading descriptions like this about The Death Of Klinghoffer which I've never checked out.