Kudos Young Cho, Your Writing is Finally Getting the Attention it Doesn’t Deserve
Larry from McHenry (Faithhealer@ameritech.net)
Submitted on: 4/22/07

Truth seeking reader, allow me to be the first to congratulate Cho Seung-Hui on his stunning, perfectly executed public relations campaign to make the world aware of his life and writings.  The first thing you have to admire about Cho is his passion to see his work and, for that matter, his name indelibly seared upon the consciousness of the people of the Western World.  I am loath to make a generalization about Oriental people, but the young man did the Oriental thing -- he was cunning. Cho succeeded in creating an international appetite for his writings and an interest in his life.  Sure, he had to step on a few toes in his quest for success, sure he had to find a way to avoid the wrath of the living relatives of the men and woman he was obligated to sacrifice in his quest for the gold, so he chose suicide. It is a sad but logical ending, but let me make a couple of suggestions and predictions.

I certainly hope that his parents will get the proper legal advice and copyright all of his writings, images, and his entire life story, from baby pictures to high school, all the mementos that can be turned into gold.  There’s much money to be made on his short violent, lonely life.  He has a sister who graduated from Princeton University, so the immigrant family should not be without access to people and proper connections to make him seem like a sympathetic figure instead of the sorry excuse for a human being he was.

To the average beer-swilling, McBurger-eating, church-attending Joe or Jane, Cho’s memory at this point in time may seem tainted, but the American people will forget the carnage, the personal deaths, the gore, and profound loss. It will take about three months, and we will have found in Mr. Cho, if handled properly by the media, a Korean hero.

I would personally love to be hired by the family as their public relations counselor.  The first thing that just about guarantees long term success is that Cho had the cold cunning to kill an aged Holocaust survivor.  Now the Jewish Holocaust industry will keep the story alive for decades.  This will only add value to Cho’s images and writings, because the way the system works, every mention of his name or use of his image, if copyrighted correctly, demands a royalty payment and that can be a lot of gold.

The second angle that should be explored is the poor immigrant story.  White people were mean to him, he couldn’t get a date to save his life, and his life, which didn’t last that long, was filled with so much sadness because of the way mean, bigoted White, American Christians treated him.  The media can generalize this to elicit sympathy from all recent immigrant groups. Illegal Mexicans, Pole’s, Haitians, they all have been, at least in their minds, screwed over by evil, mostly White American Christians. One is left with more articles and liberal stories about his life of quiet desperation and victimization.  Can you think of a better plot for a tearjerker television movie? Sure he killed a Holocaust survivor, sure he killed 32 regular people, but look on the bright side -- he practiced diversity.  In this movie, he accidentally killed the old Jewish guy, and the others had it coming (they were mean to him). Take my word on this, the literary and media whores in New York and California would love to cook up this twisted version of Cho’s life story, because they know a lot of you will eat it up.

This essay would not be complete if I didn’t mention a few suggestions for the inevitable biography. Start the book by showing starving Koreans, hungry for freedom in America, complete with Cho’s  baby pictures, a piece about his sister graduating from Princeton University, then lather on all the loneliness and grief that you’re feeling. Forget the people who lost their lives, they’re only bit players; your son is the star. There are tens of thousands of English majors out there; most of them will never be published. They will, along with their writing, sink into the quicksand of time, without ever generating much interest in themselves or their work. So I offer my congratulations, because as unfortunate and despicable as it may be, your son will be the ultimate winner.



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