T.J. Lane sounds like the name of a Country and Western singer. But it is not. It is the name of the seventeen year old who took a gun to school and killed three high school students in suburban Cleveland, Ohio. Just the latest troubled A-merry-can youth to act out his Columbine style fantasies for the entire world to see.
Of course, over the next few days, you will be hearing about what a good kid he is. There will be lavish superlatives thrown his way from the usual suspects, and everyone will be shocked that such a nice quiet child could commit such an unspeakable act.
Wait... I think it has started already:
"He was more of a quiet type of kid,” Erasmus said. “He was more of a quiet type of kid. He was really nice, though, if you did talk to him. He came from a broken home. My family knew his a little bit from high school. And he just came from a really broken down home and he was living with his grandparents. I was really shocked when I found out that it was him. Because he was, I mean, he was quiet, but he was one of the nicest kids there. You could talk to him really easily. I mean, he was funny. It was really shocking that it was him" [Source]
Well, as one of my twitter buddies said earlier, "so was Ted Bundy."
It's always shocking to A-merry-cans when things don't go according to the script. T.J. Lane is not drug dealer Jerome Johnson from North Philadelphia, who blasted another drug dealer on the corner for stealing his money. T.J. Lane is a kid from a wonderful bucolic suburban town in Northeast Ohio. A town where they have maple festivals and violent crime is just something they read about when it's committed by those savages in Cleveland.
Unfortunately, behind this Rockwellian facade, there are problems. And whenever these problems explode into something sinister they lead the evening news.
Those of us who live and breathe the problems of urban A-merry-ca are wondering, once again, what's all the fuss about? This is what troubled kids do. They shoot and kill people with no remorse. T.J. Lane was shooting in a suburban high school in Northeast, Ohio. But the shots were flying through living rooms all over A-merry-ca. Of course we will all take cover and pretend it didn't happen. That is until the next troubled suburban kid decides that he or she wants to lead the evening news.
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