Publicity still from the official website.
This is downright eerie.
Joe Morgenstern wrote this postscript to his review of “The Dark Knight Rises” in the edition of The Wall Street Journal that was delivered to my home this morning — meaning it went to press well before the mass murder in Colorado:
A note about the perils of being a movie critic in the age of polarized fandom.
I may have saved my life without realizing it by liking “The Dark Knight Rises” sufficiently—or disliking it with sufficient restraint—to have my review categorized as “ripe” rather than “rotten” on Rotten Tomatoes, a popular website that aggregates movie and DVD reviews. For those of us who write about movies to provoke discussion, these reductive categories are awfully silly, but they’re also symptoms of the love/hate, either/or ethos of contemporary discourse. In the realm of the Internet, as well as talk-radio and politics, that discourse has been growing ever more poisonous, and now the poison has contaminated Rotten Tomatoes. Earlier this week the website was forced to shut down its user comments on “The Dark Knight Rises” when negative reviews—officially adjudged “rotten”—by two of my colleagues, Christy Lemire and Marshall Fine, provoked floods of vile responses that included death threats.
Batman movies may be a bit of a special case, what with fanatical fanboys trolling the Internet to root out negative opinions of their supersolemn hero. But the Dark Knight’s acolytes don’t have a monopoly on intolerance of dissent. They’re part of a rising tide that threatens to drown Internet discussion in shrill opinion. The editors of Rotten Tomatoes have the right to excise such clearly intolerable comments, and the responsibility to improve procedures for screening out new ones. Once that’s done, however, the comments function should be fully restored. Free speech for the many shouldn’t fall victim to abuse by the few.
Write to Joe Morgenstern at joe.morgenstern@wsj.com
Wow. If the shootings had NOT happened last night, I would simply have agreed with him about the decline of discourse, particularly on the Web.
As things happened, this is particularly startling.
By the way, the way I learned of this horror was particularly unsettling. I mentioned earlier today having trouble sleeping last night, worrying because my daughter was ill in a faraway country. What sleep I got was punctuated by the sound of my iPhone receiving bulletins about the shootings. The first bulletins confused me — how could there have been a shooting at a mall in the wee hours of the morning? It was only later — 5 a.m. or so — that the more complete bulletins mentioned the midnight showing of this film, so that I understood. To the extent that you can understand anything like this.
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If all the reports circulating are correct, this guy was intelligent, maybe having some academic issues in graduate school, and of course, he is being described as “a loner” but there’s no criminal history or mental illness reported thus far.
It’s truly a tragic event, and my thoughts and heart goes out to the families and friends of the victims.
Apparently, given the crowd for the midnight premiere, there were police nearby, and reports say that they acted swiftly and probably prevented even more civilian deaths. The incident should serve as a reminder, though that intelligent, disturbed individuals intent on harming others can cause a lot of damage in a free society.
Cue the calls for gun control. Good thing it’s already settled law and nobody wants to take guns away from law abiding citizens.
I’d like to “take guns away from law-abiding citizens.” As you said, the shooter was law-abiding, until he wasn’t.
If there’d been a few more armed law abiding citizens at the theatre, there might be a few more folks who are still above ground today…
@Kathryn – Just because you’re anti-gun doesn’t mean it’s right or that everyone feels the same way. Actually you’re in the minority… a very minor, minor, minority.
How would you go about gathering up guns? Go door to door Gestapo style?
You think there are gun problems now, wait until someone tells citizens that they can’t have them.
Or if you feel so strongly, you could always stay over in Europe where it sounds to be a more appropriate lifestyle for you.
It is perfectly legal for crazy people to buy high-powered assault weapons. They can also buy cars and baseball bats and axes.
Alas, this fellow is already being painted as a plant by Obama and the UN to make gun control possible. So who’s crazier? The shooter or people who make such shootings possible?
Silence said “nobody” and I contradicted him. Basic logic.
@Kathryn – I was actually making a reference to an earlier thread where bud kept maintaining that gun rights were settled law and that nobody wanted to take them away.
I know there’s plenty of people who’d like to take them away. That bit about “nobody” was actually sarcasm, apparently it was too thickly veiled.
Okay. Sorry!
Let’s see,in a room filled with an irritating gas that cause coughing and tearing, with screaming, panicky people pushing in different directions, some would wish for more people firing, trying to hit the first guy. I think that we might have had more people killed or wounded in that instance.
Can’t say I’d buy the argument that if everyone in the theater were armed this wouldn’t have happened. Holmes’ actions were horrific and well, strategic. No amount of CC training would have prepared anyone for that. He made it out and out warfare against an unsuspecting public; men, women and children.
I’ve been kicking this one around in my head since Friday morning and I can only imagine that we will see this happen again and again. The problem is that we want this to be a romantic story about the freedom defending patriots against the sane voice of progressivism. What do the bare facts have to do with either?
Excluding more politically motivated attacks, the story is always the same. A kid whose age ranges from 22 – 26, with a very often above average intelligence and not exactly struggling economic background goes off the rails and kills a bunch of innocent people.
This isn’t so much a gun problem as it is a public health problem. Mental health issues in men tend to creep up between 15 and 24, prime time for your average spree shooter. In a bit of irony those in lower income brackets don’t have the personal safety net to get their rear ends out of a bind when less obvious and less lethal symptoms of mental disorders appear. This leaves the average spree shooter with access to firearms and the general public, while others have already been red flagged as either a mentally incapable or a felon.
This and obesity might very well be the poster children for First World Problems.
Cue the nonsense:
If there’d been a few more armed law abiding citizens at the theatre, there might be a few more folks who are still above ground today…
-Silence
I’ve heard this before and this particular incident is just about the very worst example of how that might have worked. The dude had body armor that would have rendered a 9mm Glock ineffective. The only thing that would have happened if a half dozen folks started firing handguns is for a few more opportunities for gunshot wounds. Perhaps a dozen more people would have been shot under that situations.
Besides Colorado is a concealed weapons state and it’s possible there were armed people in the audience.
Given the sharp increase in gun violence in Chicago following the Supreme Court ruling against handgun bans it seems rather obvious that the solution to this problem is more, not less gun restrictions.
Let’s start with a magazine limit of 10 bullets. No possible way that infringes on anyones 2nd ammendment rights. Then lets get rid of military-style weapons. Do we really need a machine gun to hunt deer?
None of this will happen of course. The gun nuts will howl if anyone even suggest we try to do even the tiniest thing to prevent the killings. But at the end of the day the carnage will continue and the nonsensical defense of military weaponry in the hands of private citizens will continue and the US will lead the world in murders.
If easy access to firearms made things safer Iraq would be the safest place in the world. From USA Today:
BAGHDAD (AP) – Bombings and shootings ripped across Iraq on Monday, killing at least 103 people in the deadliest day this year. The coordinated attacks in 13 cities sent a chilling warning that al-Qaeda is slowly resurging in the security vacuum created by a weak government in Baghdad and the departure of the U.S. military seven months ago.
I’m surprised the extreme right hasn’t come out with a suggestion than this shooting is some kind of Muslim extremist plot. It is so very difficult for them to accept the fact that these types of incidents can be perpetrated by anyone of any race, religion or background.
The right hasn’t done that because it is a myth of the left that the right thinks all terrorists are Muslims.
Brad, remember the OK City bombing? In the immediate aftermath of that horrific incident the initial reports indicated that to be a terrorist plot. And even to this day the conspiracy theorists suggest that was a terrorist plot. Ft. Hood is often cited as an incident of Muslim extremism. Couldn’t that just as easily be seen as an incident of soldier extremism? Or doctor extremism? And what about the so-called Mosque at Ground Zero? Or that Mosque in Tennessee? Aren’t those examples of right-wing Muslim hysteria? Turns out the Mosque at Ground Zero location wasn’t even at Ground Zero. Nor was it even at Mosque! Rather it was a sort of community center.
should read – …. the initial reports indicated that to be a Muslim terrorist plot.
@bud – “Let’s start with a magazine limit of 10 bullets. No possible way that infringes on anyones 2nd ammendment rights.”
What about those who already own the millions of 20-30-40-90-100 round magazines out on the streets? How do you recommend confiscating them? At $15-$100 each people aren’t going to hand them over… well maybe 2% will.
Then lets get rid of military-style weapons. Do we really need a machine gun to hunt deer?
Yes. Who said these are for hunting? I no longer hunt but own “military/black rifles”. I shoot paper with them.
“The gun nuts will howl if anyone even suggest we try to do even the tiniest thing to prevent the killings.”
What’s the difference? The anti-gun nuts are already howling. Either way you’re going to have people making noise.
If you want stricter gun laws enacted, you’re about 30 years too late.
I hear Barak Obama is being touted as national gun salesman of the year again for the 4th year running.
See what I mean. No reason not to have few sensible weapons restrictions but the howling goes on. And just to be clear these few things I’m talking about won’t prevent most tragic shootings. But they might prevent a few. And aren’t a few lives worth a little inconvenience? After all we have laws limiting who can drink or smoke. And we even have ridiculous laws banning marijuana. So why not ban a 100 round magazine clip?
Correct me if I’m wrong, but to load 100 rounds, you’d pretty much be talking a belt-fed weapon. That is to say, an actual machine gun.
Brad raises an interesting point. Was the assault gun a fully automatic weapon or semi-automatic? Perhaps I’m splitting hairs but if it was fully automatic and merely jammed, as has been reported, then this could have been much worse. Apparently converting to fully automatic is not that difficult. But I don’t know.
That’s a flaw in the news coverage I’ve seen. Every story like this should have an obligatory sentence describing the weapons used, in terms of whether they were full auto or semi-auto.
The AR-15 was originally manufactured by Armalite as a military weapon that could fire in either mode. That became the M-16. The later models produced by Colt, after 1963, were semi-automatic. Anything called an AR-15 after that is by definition semi-automatic. According to Wikipedia.
Apropos of nothing… “Armalite” sounds kind of like something that Australians would eat as a sandwich spread…
Oh, I see… he had put a drum on the AR-15. That’s how it had 100 rounds. And apparently, that’s also why it jammed…
100 round drums are junk and known to jam on a regular basis. He would have been better off with 30 round magazines… or having enough knowledge of the weapon to be able to clear a jam. Semi-Automatic 101.
bud – “See what I mean. No reason not to have few sensible weapons restrictions but the howling goes on. ”
You’re the one howling.
Had weapons been banned, he could have done as much damage with pipe bombs made from hardware bought steel pipe and gunpowder. If he was smart enough to rig his apartment up with the devices he had, pipe bombs would have been easy.
They’re lucky he didn’t go in with chemical weapons.
Things get banned all the time and it creates a few short-term problems. We banned things like asbestos, lead paint, leaded gasoline, DDT, certain food colorings, certain types of AC agents such as FREON. So why does a ban on something as utterly unnecessary as a 100 round magizine for an assualt rifle is a red-herring. Frankly the NRA has pretty much long ago won the fight to allow folks to have guns to defend themselves and to hunt. But they continue to push for more and more senseless allowances for guns. They even propose restrictions on concealed weapons in daycares, bars and airport terminals!
Here’s what I propose:
1. allow handguns in ones home or car for self defense or to use at a shooting range.
2. allow rifles and shotguns for hunting purposes
3. allow limited use of concealed weapons with restrictions for schools, bars, airports, government buildings and any business that has a no guns policy.
4. Ban gun clips of more than 10 rounds.
5. Ban assualt rifles that can be converted to fully automatic mode.
6. Ban the personal ownership of tanks, bazookas, hand grenades and other strictly military weapons.
7. Require sensible background checks and registrations.
1. allow handguns in ones home or car for self defense or to use at a shooting range.
–This is the rule for everyone without a conceal carry permit.
2. allow rifles and shotguns for hunting purposes
–Not much to say here (OK, there is a whole lot to say here, just not enough time and space), in theory you can hunt with anything.
3. allow limited use of concealed weapons with restrictions for schools, bars, airports, government buildings and any business that has a no guns policy.
–Unless the courts or state law say otherwise, we already do this. I can’t go into a bar, school or airport (carrying one out in open there will get you shot) with a gun. If I step into a government building with something as powerful as a slingshot (this isn’t hyperbole, a slingshot in a federal building is considered a firearm), you have just committed a “do not pass go” felony and you will go to jail; no guns or voting ever again. Allowing guns in bars is only a recent thing in a couple states and the public really isn’t big on it. Alcohol and guns don’t mix.
4. Ban gun clips of more than 10 rounds.
–We did this with the old assault weapons ban. There were problems with it. Back then it was something like 7 bullets max for a .22. It was ridiculous for gun owners. A better solution would be to introduce new magazine capacity restrictions that are proportional to the foot-pound force of the average bullet of that caliber. If done right you would have stronger restriction than you had with the Clinton provision and gun owners wouldn’t be as nearly annoyed with it (initially angry, but the long-term aggravations tend to do the real harm in non-renewal).
5. Ban assault rifles that can be converted to fully automatic mode.
–We have already done this. Back in the 90s we banned open bolt blowbacks that can be easily converted. They are still banned. Anything else requires serious training and only gunsmiths and soldiers tend to walk around with that kind of knowledge in their heads. Also if you are caught doing it, you will go to jail.
6. Ban the personal ownership of tanks, bazookas, hand grenades and other strictly military weapons.
–Unless you are authorized by the ATF (generally hold by folks who sell this kind of stuff to law enforcement) or are grandfathered in with your great-grandfathers Sears and Roebuck Tommy gun you can’t own these things. People with that kind of authorization are heavily monitored and I’d put them on the list of people least likely to commit a gun crime (don’t wan to lose your livelihood let alone go to jail). I’m guessing your point here is that the AR is a “military style weapon”. That’s is a whole different kettle of fish. That was another failure of the old Assault Weapons ban. It provided restrictions for “scary” looking, but not necessarily more deadly guns and that made gun owners mad and helped propel the lack of renewal of the old provisions. Anti-gun folks would be best served if they treaded “thoughtfully” on this one or all of their work will be in vain as soon as the political wind blow the other way.
7. Require sensible background checks and registrations.
–We already do this. The only fast track method is those who have conceal carry permits and they have already been checked. I think what you want is a better means of red-flagging the mentally ill. Deep down I think we all want that. The problem is that there are plenty of folks on the anti-gun side who think that anyone who wants a gun must already be mentally ill (though how prevalent this mindset is, is entirely up to how well the NRA spins it) and that really, really freaks out the pro-gun folks.
Just to clarify there are legal ways around 5, but “gun nuts” don’t talk about it a whole lot for fear that some crazy 24 year old will hear about it and mow down a theater of people. Should they be legal? Probably not. Are they safe? Certainly not. Has a spree shooter done it yet? Not that I can think of, unless Holmes did it and no one is saying anything about it. Will it happen? Probably, though it would be easier to ban conversion devices than ban ARs.