The oldest of three brothers raised on South L Street in Lake Worth, Florida, [Charles] Whitman attended St. Ann’s High School in Palm Beach, where he was a pitcher on the school’s baseball team. Charles and his brothers all served as altar boys at Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church, and he chose the Confirmation name “Joseph” for himself.
At the age of 6, he had scored 138 on an IQ test. Six years later, he was among the youngest to ever achieve Eagle Scout, to his father’s delight. He took five years of piano lessons.
When Whitman was 14, and still serving as an altar boy, his Scout leader Joseph Leduc completed seminary and served as the priest of Sacred Heart for a month. Leduc was a family friend, who had accompanied Whitman and his father on several hunting trips. This was also the year that he finally overcame his habit of nervously biting his nails. At the age of 16, Whitman underwent a routine appendectomy. The same year, he was hospitalized following a motorcycle accident.
At first Whitman did quite well in the Corps, earning a Good Conduct Medal and the Marine Corps Expeditionary Medal at Guantanomo Naval Base in Cuba. He also scored an eye opening 215 out of a possible 250 points on the shooting range, receiving a Sharpshooters Badge. Trying to prove his father wrong and be successful, Whitman applied for a Naval Enlisted Science Education Program scholarship, which would help him earn an engineering degree at a selected school. Whitman got the award, and was expected to enter Officer’s Candidate School upon the completion of his degree. In September of 1961 he enrolled at the University of Texas.
But despite all that promise, something awful happened five years later :
It’s a story that’s too familiar. Someone disturbed through emotional or physical trauma loses control and acts out a violent fantasy. It’s not because they play video games or listen to aggressive music or watch violent movies or don’t go to church. Oppressive security measures and an obsessive push to rid our culture of unpleasant imagery won’t make us safer. Despite what those desperate to finding an easy fix to a complicated (and probably unsolvable) problem would have you believe, sometimes people just snap.
CNN breaking: “At least 22 32 people were killed in two incidents when a lone gunman opened fire on the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg on Monday, police said. Police said they believed the shooter also was dead. Tech President Charles Steger called the shootings ‘a tragedy of monumental proportions.’”
American Airlines has set up a special page for the ladies. It’s pink, and doesn’t trouble their pretty little heads with all those complicated data fields the men enjoy so much.
There’s a certain economy to this building in Basseterre, which contains representatives of Italy, Austria, the UK, France, Switzerland, the US, Canada, and, yes, The Athlete’s Foot:
So when The Athlete’s Foot sends troops to liberate Foot Locker, we already know who’s in the coalition.
The Talking Dog interviews Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Knut Royce.
Royce is also the co-author of The Italian Letter, a new book about the forged documents that the Bush administration used to link Niger, yellowcake uranium, and Saddam Hussein as a pretext for the invasion of Iraq.
According to a 2003 report on the Census Bureau website, four of the eight wealthiest counties in America are Washington suburbs:
Median Household Income (In 2003 Inflation-adjusted Dollars)
1. Somerset County, NJ $89,289 2. Howard County, MD $88,555 3. Prince William County, VA $82,926
4. Morris County, NJ $82,025 5. Fairfax County, VA $80,753
6. Nassau County, NY $80,647
7. Santa Clara County, CA $76,544 8. Montgomery County, MD $76,439
The three most prosperous large counties in the United States are in the Washington suburbs, according to census figures released yesterday, which show that the region has the second-highest income and the least poverty of any major metropolitan area in the country.
Of course, you can understand how Richard Cohen could get this wrong, since he has neither internet access nor a subscription to the Washington Post.
PREVIOUSLY, IN SIMILIAR FANTASY WORLDS: Joseph Lieberman explains, “Being a Senator, I haven’t gone much beyond the middle class.”
My Trebekistan friend Leslie Frates points out that Jon Corzine is the third recent New Jersey governor to break a leg while in office. James McGreevey broke his left leg in 2002, and Christine Todd Whitman broke her right leg in 1999.
Coincidence, yes. But I challenge you not to think of Tony Soprano right now.
As a long-suffering Cleveland native, I’m certainly used to Indian fans willing to find joy in even the worst defeats. But this is a whole other level.
Here’s a few seconds of video I grabbed while Indian fans (as in India India) were cheering wildly — IN-DI-A! IN-DI-A! etc. — the other day at the Cricket World Cup:
This enthusiasm comes despite the fact that India was already eliminated from the tournament. About three weeks earlier.
The two teams actually on the field were England and Bangladesh.
Imagine how vocal these folks would be if their team were actually on the same continent.
Heard about the loss of Kurt Vonnegut a little late here. I add to the chorus: well, crap.
Cat’s Cradle was formative for me, especially the granfalloon. As a teenage kid of union-member lapsed Baptist Democrats sent away to an upper-class all-boys’ jacket-and-tie dress code college prep high school twenty miles from my hometown and the kids in my own neighborhood, I felt inundated by granfalloons, although I didn’t know what they were. (I count at least ten in that sentence alone.) Then Vonnegut gave me a word for them. I think this was the first piece of writing that ever really made me see aspects of my own life in a new and useful way.
I had no idea that fiction could even do that.
I always figured someday I’d get the chance to thank the guy. I add this as foma: maybe someday I will.
PS: I also think somebody should be comparing the amount of airtime Vonnegut’s passing is getting compared to the death of Anna Nicole Smith. I believe the ratio might provide an exact, scientific, numerical measure on our misplaced priorities.
If you’re feeling bereft at the Kurt Vonnegut-less eternity that stretches before us, Dennis Perrin has some great video of him. I also recommend this post by Poputonian at Digby’s, which links to prevous Vonnegut-themed posts here and here.
Vonnegut was kind enough to provide a blurb for my first book, and we had an occasional correspondence after that. This is a postcard that arrived out of the blue a couple of years ago …
