This Grinch from Hell will not steal Christmas

Listen to the Revolution 21 podcast.

Christmas is not the most wonderful time of the year in Hell.

Among the deadly hosts, yuletide is a mocking reminder of that awful day when their archenemy came as a little child to save mankind from their worldly maw. It's the yearly reminder of the terrible day they saw the handwriting on the sulfurous wall.

Christmas is almost as bad as Easter, that annual commemoration of the day Satan and all his demons got the official and final word that the jig was up.

The Evil One hates Christmas. And even though he knows he can't beat it, the devil still dedicates the franchise to bloodying it any way he can.

THIS YEAR IN OMAHA, our annual commemoration of the Lord's birth is looking rather like a fight scene from Raging Bull.

Bloodied. Battered.

But not beaten.

Evil came to my city this week, and it used a broken, disturbed and violent 19-year-old to murder the innocent, shatter their loved ones, terrorize hundreds and batter the hearts, hopes and dreams of us all. Evil came to Westroads Mall, announcing its arrival with the report of an assault rifle -- a pow pow pow that cut through the Christmas music on a department store's public-address system.

What black irony that lay in the heart of darkness. However, says Isaiah . . .

The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.

Thou hast multiplied the nation, and not increased the joy: they joy before thee according to the joy in harvest, and as men rejoice when they divide the spoil.

For thou hast broken the yoke of his burden, and the staff of his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, as in the day of Midian.

For every battle of the warrior is with confused noise, and garments rolled in blood; but this shall be with burning and fuel of fire.

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counseller, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.

THIS PRESENT DARKNESS will not prevail. The light will shine, even if through our tears. In Omaha this year, the devil and his tortured lackey will not steal Christmas. They can break our hearts, but they can't take away our joy.

Not this Christmas, and not next Christmas. And not the next, or the next after that.

Christmas, and the One Whose birth it celebrates, are bigger than evil, and their joy negates the despair of a lunatic kid who sought to kill the world.

Robert A. Hawkins cannot have Christmas. Neither can the devil. To hell with them. And to Hell with at least one of the two.

THE HORRIBLE NEWS came this week just as I was getting ready to put together the music for this week's edition of the Revolution 21 podcast. To say the least, it put a crimp in things, which is why the show is a day late -- I didn't know what I was going to do with the podcast.

I could do a tribute show much like ones I've done in the past but, then again, going to the well over and over with that format can get old fast. And horrible things worthy of commemoration just keep happening. I couldn't -- can't -- ignore the horror in my own back yard, but. . . .

What sheer awfulness and irony that such a massacre would happen amid a season of great joy and good cheer. Really and truly, it has been almost too much to bear this week. And finally, this one thought hit me. Hard.

They cannot have Christmas.

They will not take the joy of Christmas from us. Not now. Not in Omaha.

Never.

THUS, Revolution 21 -- right now -- is repeating last year's Christmas program, replete with the joy of a Christmas I experienced long ago and far away. Where I once again am a child, and where loved ones long gone are alive again.

My prayer is that my yuletide reminiscence will bring on a few happy ones of your own. Sometimes, we find that our joy can become hidden amid the detritus of life in this vail of tears. But it's there; it just takes a little digging to get to it.

Christ is born in Bethlehem . . . no man, no principality, no power can undo that. Alleluia! There will be Christmas in Omaha, and we will rejoice in it.

And the devil -- he who prowls about the world seeking the ruin of souls -- can just go to Hell.

Merry Christmas, y'all.

Culture. Of. Death. Literally.

I wish I could say I was shocked.

But what do you expect from a culture so in love with death -- from abortion to euthanasia to capital punishment to virtual murder sprees via video game . . . to flesh-and-blood mass murder by real-life terrorists on college campuses and in shopping malls bedecked in red-and-green Christmas cheer.

No, it's come to this, as reported by The Daily Collegian at Penn State:

All it took were a couple of pictures posted on the Internet. Mere hours after a Virginia television station reported that Penn State students had uploaded pictures of Halloween partygoers dressing as Virginia Tech shooting victims, criticism exploded from both campuses, with one Facebook.com group denouncing the costumes reaching 4,100 members as of 2 a.m. this morning.

The only publicly accessible picture, uploaded after Halloween, shows a woman wearing an orange Virginia Tech T-shirt smeared with blood and a bullet wound, posing jauntily. According to television station WSLS in Roanoke, Va., several other pictures showed a similarly attired man.

For Virginia Tech students still shaken by a tragedy not yet a year old, the pictures are a slap in the face from students of a university they once lauded for its sensitivity and compassion in the wake of their loss.

University spokesman Bill Mahon, who released a statement to the Blacksburg, Va. campus, said he was shocked by the pictures.

"I certainly find it appalling, as most Penn Staters would find it appalling," he said. He said he believes it happened "off campus, in a private party."

Caitlin Beckett, a sophomore majoring in finance at Virginia Tech, agreed. Learning of the pictures several hours before she was interviewed, she said it was too painful to join the group protesting against it. Her friend, Mary Read, then 19, died in the shootings.

"I just didn't want to think about it -- it's just kind of sickening," she said. "You would think that people, after what happened, would have more respect than that ... even if it happened after five years, it wouldn't be OK."

Virginia Tech freshman Krista Silano wasn't a student at the university when Cho Seung Hui shot and killed 32 students last April, but she remembers the wave of loss and grief that struck the town.

She attended a memorial service with her high school lacrosse team.

"It's going to affect everyone who was affected or even just goes here," she said. "I didn't think that would ever happen from any community. I didn't think anyone would make light of the subject."

TWO DAYS AGO, eight people who didn't deserve it -- as if anyone does -- got blown away by a madman in a shopping mall a mile from where I sit. A woman who has done my wife's hair for probably 15 years, and who has become a friend of hers over those years, hid in the women's room on the third floor of the Von Maur store as Robert Hawkins slaughtered people mere yards away.

This woman helped to fashion a tourniquet out of a man's necktie to stanch the blood flowing from his shot-up arm.

I have no sympathy for the "shock value" antics from a bunch of a**holes at Penn State University.

BY GOD'S GRACE, they laughingly apply fake bullet holes to their own torsos and heads, and coat their bodies with phony blood. By God's grace, they were not in Von Maur at Westroads Mall, nor were they in Norris Hall at Virginia Tech.

God is holy and merciful. I am neither. If it were left up to my grace. . . .

Demon: Hunter

This is what the devil looks like. At least it's what he looked like Wednesday afternoon.

WE GET THIS VIEW from Von Maur department store surveillance video, following the release of still photos from those recordings by Omaha police. In those stills, we see that Satan is a 19-year-old kid

(or is he 20, given the conflicting age reports?), more than a little crazy, and not exactly a natty dresser.

We also sees that Satan's preferred weapon against the humanity he so hates is an old semiautomatic rifle. To clarify, the Russian firearm was the devil's favored weapon two days ago. He likes to switch around and experiment a lot, depending on the situation.

The devil looks like a real loser. Then again, Satan is a real loser -- as we shall see in the fullness of time.

This is not a popular viewpoint in Therapeutic America, where people no longer commit evil, they merely make mistakes. Like Robert A. Hawkins walked into Von Maur with that rifle hidden under his sweats, got in the elevator, rode to the third floor and misguidedly gunned down eight innocent people before making the poor choice of blowing his own brains out. There is little doubt that Robbie Hawkins was a deeply disturbed young man, driven by faulty brain chemistry, inadequate socialization or God-knows-what to make one "poor choice" after another during the course of his tormented time on Earth.

Likewise, there is little doubt that young Mr. Hawkins, future terrorist and mass murderer, was failed by a lot of people and institutions along the way. While some mentally ill people may well be born a taco shy of a combination plate, I think it takes a village to take a lunatic and turn him into a mass murderer.

IT TAKES the hard work of "powers and principalities," too. The trouble with Therapeutic America is it doesn't deal so well with the mystery of evil. That enigmatic force that can take a disturbed young doper and dropout and turn him into a murderous ball of resentment, hatred and despair.

One capable of walking into Westroads Mall and ending the hopes, dreams, passions and lives of eight people who never did a thing to the man who hunted them like game in the woods. A society that seeks to assign blame for a killer's actions to everyone and everything but the killer himself ironically is unable to deal with the source and summit of horrors like that in Omaha this week: The devil, who really did make Robbie Hawkins do it.

If I understand how things like this work -- which I think I do -- Hawkins' extreme mental and emotional instability would be just the chink in a person's armor that the devil really can exploit . . . in this case, to spectacular effect. For instance, the devil probably had a hand in handing Robbie Hawkins his first joint. And his first beer.

SATAN PROBABLY WORKED a little overtime to get him into the house of a woman alleged to have tolerated impressive levels of toking and boozing by the teens under her roof. I know Satan and his junior demons have put in significant overtime in turning the United States into a nation awash in drugs, illicit sex, rampant violence (and the adoration thereof) and materialism so pervasive that it not only warps how we live, but also who we are. It wasn't for nothing that Jesus warned us that a camel can pass through the eye of a needle more easily that a rich man can get into Heaven.

Living in America is a damned hard spiritual slog for Average Joes like you and me. Imagine what it became for a broken vessel like Robbie Hawkins. Well, none of us has to imagine anymore, do we?

Hawkins had help in becoming the monster on the nightly news, that is true. He had help from the devil in us, as well as the devil on his shoulder. This is an assertion that, to modern ears, sounds positively medieval. It flies in the face of modern science, and it is an affront to our Western reluctance to deal with all that religious s***.

Science can explain brain chemistry, more or less. Science, however, can't unravel the mystery of the evil that descended upon Westroads Mall on Wednesday. That takes a medieval mindset.

One that knows about the devil whispering words of hate to a whacked-out kid. One that knows that during Omaha's blackest hour, a troubled soul surrendered itself to the prince of darkness and became one with Death. One with the devil.

It takes a worldview medieval enough to know that when Satan figured he'd gotten all the due he was going to get on the third floor of Von Maur, he climbed back out and back up onto Robbie Hawkins' shoulder. And then he whispered in Robbie's ear:

"Do it, faggot. Do eeeeet."

'Dave . . . my mind is going. I can feel it.'

As was obvious to anyone who tried to log into the Omaha World-Herald's website, Omaha.com, during Wednesday's chaos in the Big O, the newspaper was having itself some HAL 9000 problems.

No word yet on casualties at 14th and Douglas.

The media watch blog of the alternative City Weekly took keen notice as well, linking to a West Coast media exec's scathing blog entry about Omaha.com:

The problems the Omaha World-Herald's online portal, Omaha.com, has had in handling large amounts of visitor traffic have been well documented. But now, more than just Nebraskans are taking notice.

"Reflections of a Newsosaur" is a blog written by Silicon Valley CEO Alan D. Mutter. The former city editor of the Chicago Sun-Times later became the second-in-command editor of the San Francisco Chronicle. Today, he is a managing partner of Tapit Partners, a two-man, think-tank that helps business owners create successful companies.

In a post titled, "Flat-footed in Omaha," Mutter takes the paper to task for problems he says were not technical, but editorial.

"The poor coverage evidently was caused by a lack of contingency planning on the part of editors, web producers, reporters, photographers and all the other people who are responsible for rapidly, thoughtfully and accurately gathering the information and visual assets necessary to tell a story like this in the age of multimedia."

FOLLOW THE LINK if you have a strong stomach, because the keelhauling to which Mutter subjects the hometown rag would make even Dick Cheney squeamish.

Thing is, the World-Herald didn't need no Blue State techno guru to hit it with the painfully obvious. I already did.

Back in May.

IT'S NOT THAT I'm comfortable with blowing my own horn -- or even particularly looking to do so. It's more a plea for recognition that maybe one or two of us here in Flyover Country might have a couple of brain cells to rub together, too.

Yep, we do obvious as well as anybody.

Uh huh.

Teen-age Baghdad?

Click on photo for KFAB audio.

In the aftermath of Wednesday's mall massacre in Omaha, some things are starting to emerge from the haze of chaos and the numbness of shock.

FOR EXAMPLE, it's really starting to look like something is seriously not right in Robert Hawkins' "posse." The problem, however, in what seems to be a Bellevue, Neb., feedback loop of whack is not that there are kids out there who have issues.

The problem would appear to be that there are kids out there with issues immersed in an absolutely pathological culture -- one, as I said earlier, obsessed with all the wrong things. Not even a day after Hawkins massacred eight people, then himself, at the Von Maur at Westroads Mall, another one of his circle has been arrested on felony counts.

From a story by Jason Kuiper in the Omaha World-Herald:

A 17-year-old Bellevue boy was arrested after being accused of threatening a girl whom he said made comments relating to Wednesday's fatal shootings at Von Maur.

David S. Horvath, of 3016 JoAnn Ave. in Bellevue, was taken into custody Thursday afternoon and brought to the Sarpy County Juvenile Justice Center.

Bellevue Police Chief John Stacey said officers went to Horvath's house Thursday to investigate a girl's report that Horvath threatened her for making disparaging remarks about his close friend, Robert Hawkins. Officials say Hawkins shot and killed eight people at Von Maur at the Westroads Mall on Wednesday afternoon before killing himself.

Stacey said officers arrested Horvath on suspicion of making felony terroristic threats. The officers also confiscated two shotguns and a rifle from the house, he said.

THERE IS SOMETHING of a striking comparison to be made in all this. If what Robbie Hawkins did Wednesday is fundamentally no different from what a jihadi terrorist does, then how is what his buddy is alleged to have done much different from what Iraqi sectarian militias do?

Just asking the uncomfortable questions, here.

It's terrorism, is what it is

What's the difference between Robert A. Hawkins and an al Qaida terrorist?

Nothing. Except, perhaps, that the al Qaida terrorist has access to better technology for even more efficient slaughter than can come from the barrel of an old Russian assault rifle.

Perhaps the difference is that -- unlike the al Qaida bigs who direct the foot soldiers of international terror -- Bellevue, Nebraska's high-school dropout and homegrown suicide shooter just was too damned stupid to graduate to suicide bomber. After all, you have to know how to wire up a bomb vest and have the scratch to buy the TNT or plastique.

And it's hard to come up with that kind of money when you can't even hold down a job at McDonald's. So stealing Daddy's rifle it was.

But why does a mass murderer -- an all-American Terrorist Without a Cause -- do it?

Michael Kelly looks for an answer in this morning's Omaha World-Herald:

But why at all? Why do some become mass killers?

"More often than not," [James Alan Fox, criminal justice professor at Boston's Northeastern University] said, "they see themselves as victims of injustice. They seek vengeance against people they blame.

"They tend to be loners and losers, people who failed at work or at home. They externalize blame. A lot of us, when things go wrong, blame ourselves - whereas these individuals always blame someone else."

Sometimes, he said, it starts with a specific grudge - a job or relationship gone bad, and a desire to get even. Along the way, the shooter may kill others.

They tend to use guns because guns create distance. "It's a lot easier to stand back, pull a trigger and shoot people without having any contact with them."

AND MAYBE an explosive suicide vest was just too icky for a depressed, demented American youth who wanted to "go out in style."

Robert A. Hawkins was a terrorist just as much as is Osama bin Laden. Osama's a big leaguer; Robbie Hawkins was a rookie-league screwball pitcher. How do you like your newfound fame, kid?

I can appreciate that Hawkins was a sad, tormented and pathological young adult. I can. So were Hank Williams and Janis Joplin, but they still managed to leave behind much beauty in this world and killed no one but, ultimately, themselves.

And let's not forget Vincent van Gogh.

Robbie Hawkins' legacy is death, panic, mayhem, gore and heartbreak. Thousands of years of human tradition and theology tell us mayhem and death are the province of the Evil One, and modern psychology can offer no treatment -- no effective prophylactic -- for the demonic.

Robert A. Hawkins, age 20, was a sick young man. A sick young man who listened to the devil inside. A sick young man for whom self-murder just wasn't good enough.

No, he had to take eight others with him on his way out.

I grieve for the hell Robbie Hawkins' life became, just as I weep over the hell on earth he brought to innocent Christmas shoppers and salespeople. I will not, however, make excuses for what he did -- what he did to eight fellow humans, what he did to their families and friends, what he did to this city.

This city . . . Omaha. My home.

With great difficulty, I pray that God has more mercy on Robbie Hawkins' tormented soul than Robbie Hawkins had on a bunch of innocent people he knew not from Adam. But that doesn't change what Hawkins decided to become Wednesday afternoon -- a terrorist. Albeit one without a clue.

WE LIVE IN A SOCIETY that has fetishized sex, violence, death and materialism. None of the above can fill the void that haunts our being. None of the above can give adequate meaning to young lives like the one Robert A. Hawkins threw away in that Omaha shopping mall.

Americans are quick to mock those young, Islamic terrorists who embrace suicide, murder and carnage for the greater glory of Allah -- and the chance to screw themselves silly in Paradise with 72 hot virgins.

But at least they kill -- and die -- for something, no matter how warped.

For what did Robbie Hawkins -- and all his youthful predecessors like Harris, Klebold and Cho -- kill . . . and die?

For what?

No, it wasn't a bad dream

Alone in the night

Terrors, and other dark thoughts, come in the night.

They lurk in the shadows, waiting for the witching hour, consolidating their dark forces for the assault on the lonely human soul. Yes, terrors come in the night.

WEDNESDAY, terror also came in the day to Omaha, my home -- to this stolid yet quirky city on the Missouri River. A tormented, 20-year-old loser screwed up one time too many, then listened yet again to the demon on his shoulder, the one telling him he was human excrement and to do something about it.

The Omaha World-Herald today quotes what that devil was whispering in Robbie Hawkins' ear, which he faithfully copied onto his suicide note: "I'm a piece of shit, but I'm going to be famous now."

Infamous, actually.

He took his father's old Russian SKS semiautomatic assault rifle. He took a couple of clips and some ammo, too. He taped the clips together, so he could reload in the blink of an eye.

Then he drove his used Jeep Cherokee to Westroads Mall and shot up the Von Maur department store. He blew away eight innocent human beings, then he blew himself to Kingdom Come.

Or somewhere.

BUT THIS POST isn't about young Mr. Hawkins and his Final Solution to a life gone south. This post is about the terrors that come in the dark of the night to a mostly tranquil city of 425,000, where the big news a couple of days ago was the Nebraska Cornhuskers' new football coach.

Well, that was the big news, until. . . .

Nebraska has seen nothing like this since the days of Charles Starkweather, who 50 years ago set out on a killing spree so notorious that it inspired Bruce Springsteen to write an entire gothic, folk-rock masterpiece of an album. But it took Starkweather a whole month to do what he did.

Omaha is reeling as I write this in the wee, dark hours. Christmas trees stand as blinking affronts to bereft families in houses that are one person emptier than they should be.

Spouses are dead. Friends are gone. Children are orphans now, in the black of this December night.

Terrors descend on a bereft, shell-shocked city. And we need someone to talk to. We need the light of a candle -- figurative, literal, metaphorical . . . I really don't give a good g**damn -- because we are just too bloody tired, and heartbroken, to curse the darkness anymore.

BACK IN THE DAY, I remember when one (or more) local radio stations would stand in the gap, helping beat back the terrors for a sleepless city. A city that dares not sleep for fear of what it might dream.

Oldsters like myself remember reassuring voices in the night -- friends as close as the radio on the night table. They were there, in the air, soothing our frayed nerves with good music.

They were there, taking calls from the wide-awake and brokenhearted (and even letting some of us talk it all out over the air and into the ether) when tragedy visited in bygone days.

They. Were. There.

When. We. Needed. Them.

The voices in the night were there when madmen shot the Kennedys.

They were there when a madman shot Martin.

They were there when Elvis died, and when a nut named Chapman killed John Lennon.

They were there through all manner of local calamities, storms and crises. But that was then, in a land called Back in the Day.

TONIGHT, for some unfathomable reason, I turned on the radio. On one of our public stations, the news . . . from the BBC. I switched the wireless to AM and tuned to KFAB, the blowtorch of the Midwest -- the station generations of Omahans listened to to see if the morning's snow canceled the day's classes . . . back in the day.

I remember back in 1988, when Omaha had been lashed by a line of hellacious storms, including at least one tornado. Much of the city was dark. The wife and I were struggling to salvage the contents of our fridge.

Our light came from wax, a wick and a flame, and our link to the world was a battery radio. It was tuned to 1110 AM. The DJ was informative, the music was middle-of-the-road, and the turntables ran fast . . . then slow . . . then fast . . . then slow, for the emergency generator was a bit hinky.

In these small hours, I sit here trying to make sense of the madness that came to my city Wednesday. And when I tuned to dependable ol' KFAB -- now just another brick in the Clear Channel wall of suck -- hoping against hope to hear a friendly voice in the night, I heard. . . .

Nothing.

THE TRANSMITTER was on, but nobody was home. Not even George Noory, who usually at that hour is chasing the spacemen on Coast to Coast A.M. Nope, at 1:07 a.m., there was complete dead air.

And complete dead air at 1:17. And 1:27. And 1:37, except for the ID and commercials that ran right on schedule at 1:32.

We're on our own. It's just us . . . and those terrors in the night.

If you're checking in from somewhere else . . .

Please pray for my city. This is our worst hour, and it has come just in time to mock a season of joy.

It would seem that in this place -- built up a century and a half ago from the hills on a harsh and unforgiving northern prairie -- the joy of our Savior's coming and the horror of his execution on the cross will be united rather vividly this year.

What Child is this who, laid to rest
On Mary’s lap is sleeping?
Whom angels greet with anthems sweet,
While shepherds watch are keeping?
This, this is Christ the King,
Whom shepherds guard and angels sing;
Haste, haste, to bring Him laud,
The Babe, the Son of Mary.

Why lies He in such mean estate,
Where ox and ass are feeding?
Good Christians, fear, for sinners here
The silent Word is pleading.
Nails, spear shall pierce Him through,
The cross be borne for me, for you.
Hail, hail the Word made flesh,
The Babe, the Son of Mary.

So bring Him incense, gold and myrrh,
Come peasant, king to own Him;
The King of kings salvation brings,
Let loving hearts enthrone Him.
Raise, raise a song on high,
The virgin sings her lullaby.
Joy, joy for Christ is born,
The Babe, the Son of Mary

Here's what we pray. Here's what it means.

St. Michael the Archangel,
defend us in battle.
Be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the Devil.
May God rebuke him, we humbly pray,
and do thou,
O Prince of the heavenly hosts,
by the power of God,
thrust into hell Satan,
and all the evil spirits,
who prowl about the world
seeking the ruin of souls.
Amen.

THE PRAYER to St. Michael the Archangel used to be recited after every Mass in the Catholic Church. It still is in some places, and we often take its words for granted.

Until. . . .

I don't know that we often grasp what that means -- or, at least, what it can mean -- when we routinely recite "be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the Devil" or ". . . Satan and all the evil spirits, who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls."

Today, in Omaha at Westroads Mall, Satan and all the evil spirits were on the prowl. It is not a pretty picture we receive from the Omaha World-Herald story today:

Renee Toney was working in the gift wrap area behind the customer service counter when the gunman came off a third-floor elevator and began firing shots into the ceiling.

"He was moving very fast," she said. The shots "were very, very fast, I would say closer to 30 (shots) in all."

A supervisor called for everyone to go into a stockroom behind the customer service area, and she rushed there, the others just feet behind her.

But she was the only one of her immediate co-workers to make it to the stockroom.

"None of them made it out," Toney said. "I was up front, and everybody except me was shot. It's a blur. I don't even know how I got to the stockroom. I was the closest one to the stockroom. Within seconds, they were shot right behind me."

A supervisor later told Toney that the man had said, "Open the safe." One of the employees moved to open the safe, Toney said. "She never made it to the safe. He shot her before she made it."

When police later arrived and ushered Toney out, she said she saw blood all over the floor and as many as six bodies, some on top of each other.

Mickey Vickroy, who was wrapping gifts at customer service but out of sight of the service counter, said she heard gunshots and some yell, "Gun!"

About a dozen customer service employees ran back into a storage area.

Roxanne Philip, another customer service worker, said the gunshots were so close that it sounded like they were being fired right next to her. She said she took cover and was scared "because I thought I would be next."

Philip said she never saw the shooter, but as she left the customer service area after police arrived, she saw that a woman on the other side of the customer service counter had been shot and appeared to be dead. She said she thought her boss had been shot because she heard him moaning.

Chuck Wright, a Von Maur employee, said a co-worker who also worked in customer service described hearing the shooting break out and people running. The co-worker saw what appeared to be a customer who had been shot and heard a co-worker in customer service yelling for help.

Someone yelled, "Hold on, Fred, we'll get to you."

Another co-worker of Wright's described standing on the second floor near the escalator and looking up toward the commotion. She then saw a man with a gun lean over a third-floor railing. He then shot a man standing next to her in the head.

LET US PRAY. St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. . . .

50 years later: Just a meanness in this world

From the Omaha World-Herald:

The 19-year-old shooter died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. His body was found on the third floor of the Von Maur at Westroads Mall.

It was the deadliest shooting spree in Nebraska since Charles Starkweather's 1958 rampage.

DID YOU CATCH THAT? "It was the deadliest shooting spree in Nebraska since Charles Starkweather's 1958 rampage."

This month and next mark the 50th anniversary of Starkweather's killing spree across Nebraska and Wyoming, spanning December 1957 and January 1958.

I don't know what, if anything, that means. It's eerie as hell, though.

They declared me unfit to live said into that great void my soul'd be hurled
They wanted to know why I did what I did
Well sir I guess there's just a meanness in this world

-- From "Nebraska,"
Bruce Springsteen, 1982,
based on Starkweather

Death . . . the final solution

A troubled 19-year-old had some scrapes with The Man, some of the final bad moves of his tortured time on Earth. Then he got fired from Mickey D's.

THAT, APPARENTLY, turned out to be the last straw for the teen authorities identified as Robert A. Hawkins -- male, Caucasian, of Bellevue, Neb. KETV, Channel 7, has the details:

Hawkins, 19, had been arrested on a couple of misdemeanors in November and was due in court this month. One charge included minor in possession of alcohol. He was arrested on Nov. 24.

Sarpy County deputies said they are getting a warrant to search Hawkins' home in the Quail Creek neighborhood in Bellevue.

The woman who owns that house at 4302 McCartey Drive, who only gave her first name of Debra, said Hawkins had a lot of emotional instability. She said she thought he was turning things around. She said he had just learned that he was fired from McDonald's.

Debra said Hawkins was coming out of his room Wednesday morning when she last saw him.

"He said he'd gotten fired and was pretty upset and said, 'This is the only way,' and we tried to talk to him," Debra said. "He was just a very troubled -- I had no idea that he was this troubled. I don't know if it was because he got fired from McDonald's."

Debra said she saw Hawkins with a gun last night and thought he and her sons were going hunting, which they did quite often.

At 4:30 p.m., Rollie Yost, in the Sarpy County Sheriff's Office, said shortly after the shooting, Hawkins' mother walked into its office with a note that "could be interpreted as suicidal."

Yost said Sarpy County is working with Omaha police.

A friend of Hawkins, Shawn, told KETV NewsWatch 7 said Hawkins had been on antidepressants. He was staying with friends in Quail Creek, the friend said, and he said Hawkins had recently begun bouncing from job to job and making "some bad judgment calls." Shawn said he was shocked to hear it was the man he calls "Robbie." Shawn said he had heard through the grapevine on Wednesday that Robbie was suicidal.

Shawn said he last saw Hawkins a few months ago.

A KETV.com user e-mailed this:

"I went to school for seven years with (Hawkins) and he seemed to be a suicidal kid. During school, he would talk about killing or something along those lines."

WAS IT HAYWIRE brain chemistry, or was it a devil on his shoulder telling Robert A. Hawkins "Kill, kill, kill"?

Does it even matter? Whatever the source of the madness, the result was pure evil. The fires of Hell billowing up to Earth and into our lives.

Innocent lives snuffed out as quickly as rifle rounds could tear through flesh and bone. Death was the final solution for Hawkins, and he decided it would be the final solution for eight other Omahans he didn't know from Adam.

It seems to me that death has become our No. 1 solution for everything today.

Even for "an awesome kid," as related just now by one of his friends to a TV reporter keeping vigil outside the house where Hawkins crashed during his last days.

The friend found out this afternoon that his buddy had become Death, destroyer of worlds. TV viewers learned that this caused the lad to be "beat up about it for a while."

But then, in the span of a few hours, came the realization that "Life goes on, and I'll get through it."

Mass murder by your good bud. No biggie.

I REMEMBER reading Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness in ninth grade, it must have been. It comes back to me in times like these, all the more as our society becomes all the more like "The horror":

"Anything approaching the change that came over his features I have never seen before, and hope never to see again. Oh, I wasn't touched. I was fascinated. It was as though a veil had been rent. I saw on that ivory face the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror--of an intense and hopeless despair. Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge? He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision--he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath:

"`The horror! The horror!'

"I blew the candle out and left the cabin. The pilgrims were dining in the mess-room, and I took my place opposite the manager, who lifted his eyes to give me a questioning glance, which I successfully ignored. He leaned back, serene, with that peculiar smile of his sealing the unexpressed depths of his meanness. A continuous shower of small flies streamed upon the lamp, upon the cloth, upon our hands and faces. Suddenly the manager's boy put his insolent black head in the doorway, and said in a tone of scathing contempt:

"`Mistah Kurtz--he dead.'

(snip)

"`His end,' said I, with dull anger stirring in me, `was in every way worthy of his life.'

"`And I was not with him,' she murmured. My anger subsided before a feeling of infinite pity.

"`Everything that could be done --' I mumbled.

"`Ah, but I believed in him more than any one on earth--more than his own mother, more than -- himself. He needed me! Me! I would have treasured every sigh, every word, every sign, every glance.'

"I felt like a chill grip on my chest. `Don't,' I said, in a muffled voice.

"`Forgive me. I--I have mourned so long in silence--in silence. . . . You were with him -- to the last? I think of his loneliness. Nobody near to understand him as I would have understood. Perhaps no one to hear. . . .'

"`To the very end,' I said, shakily. `I heard his very last words. . . .' I stopped in a fright.

"`Repeat them,' she murmured in a heart-broken tone. `I want--I want -- something -- something -- to -- to live with.'

"I was on the point of crying at her, `Don't you hear them?' The dusk was repeating them in a persistent whisper all around us, in a whisper that seemed to swell menacingly like the first whisper of a rising wind. `The horror! The horror!'

"`His last word -- to live with,' she insisted. `Don't you understand I loved him -- I loved him -- I loved him!'

"I pulled myself together and spoke slowly.

"`The last word he pronounced was -- your name.'"

OUR NAME.

Mental illness, or demons, or just plain garden-variety despair, or just plain meanness all have been constants in the human experience. What is relatively new is efficient means for maximum annihilation of those around us, as well as the mainstreaming of maximum annihilation as a way of getting our "15 minutes of fame" on our way out of this vail of tears.

The horror. Our horror.

Immense tragedy makes you do odd things

I am one of those people who notes the little absurdities and oddities amid great tragedy, how sheer urgency and a little panic makes people do odd things.

This is one of those moments and -- though I'm skating along the thin edge of propriety amid the horror of the previously unthinkable -- I did want to note one bit of media pretense and stodginess crashing to the ground and breaking into a million pieces. Because when it all hits the fan, you've got to do what you've got to do.

Like use the word "blog."

This happened at the Omaha World-Herald, which has been notoriously suspicious of this Internet thing . . . particularly the phenomenon of weblogs. In fact, "blog" (a.k.a. "live update," when the paper absolutely, positively had to commit blogging) was that Whose Name Must Not Be Spoken.

Until today, when immense tragedy pushed the trivial and the petty to the side, as old media and new did what they had to do. Today, instead, all of us were forced to focus on the Big Things in life.

And death.

Lone gunman, police think

The full horror of what hit this big small town -- hit it out of the blue this Christmas season, evil descending upon unsuspecting shoppers at the area's biggest mall -- is just starting to sink in as authorities begin to sort out just what the hell happened in Omaha this afternoon.

Right now, police say they think the shooter acted alone, then killed himself. At least 14 people were shot; nine are dead, including the gunman.

Asked about the camo-clad man arrested at a Westroads Mall transit center, a police spokeswoman said officers were rounding up anyone who fit early descriptions of the gunman. If the bus-stop man actually was trying to hide under a bench, and why, we don't know.

ALL WE KNOW is the cops think the shooter was alone. And dead.

According to one television report, the mass shooting may have been a murder-suicide writ large. From KETV, Channel 7:

At 4:30 p.m., Rollie Yost, in the Sarpy County Sheriff's Office, said shortly after the shooting, a woman walked into its office with a note that "could be interpreted as suicidal." Yost said the note is believed to be connected to the Westroads shooting. Yost said the note contained information from a 19-year-old man.

Yost said Sarpy County is working with Omaha police.

A REPORTER on KMTV, Channel 3 spoke of the enormity of what he'd just witnessed just now starting to hit him. I think the same is happening right now for most of the 425,000 residents of this relatively prosperous, relatively peaceful city on the edge of the Great Plains.

Stuff like this doesn't happen here. But now it has, and we have to deal with it.

Merry Christmas.

Newspaper: Nine dead at Omaha mall

The Omaha World-Herald reports nine dead in the wake of a shooting spree at Omaha's Westroads Mall. Police just confirmed this.

VARIOUS TV REPORTS still have one gunman dead inside Von Maur department store, and at least one suspect arrested outside the mall, apparently after attempting to hide under a bus-stop bench.

The suspect arrested fit the description of the shooter -- a black man wearing a camouflage jacket. Police are saying the shooter is among the nine dead.

All hell breaks loose a mile down the road

A sniper's gunshots shredded "peace on Earth and goodwill to men" in an Omaha mall filled with Christmas shoppers today, not long after President Bush flew out of this Midwestern city.

SHOTS STARTED ringing out in the Von Maur department store at Westroads Mall about 1:30 this afternoon . . . roughly. The Omaha World-Herald is reporting five dead and at least a dozen wounded.

Various television reports say either one or two suspected gunmen have been arrested, with police radio traffic indicating there also might be a gunman dead inside the store, shot by his own hand. Naturally, all is chaos at the moment, all reports are pretty sketchy, and no one knows precisely what we're dealing with, here.

I do know this: One gunman equals a nut; two equal a plot. And where there's a plot, there might be an incident of terrorism. Maybe.

May God have mercy on the souls of the dead, and grant peace and consolation to their families. And may He grant healing and peace to the wounded.

People are stupid

In case you had any lingering illusions that people might be smarter than they actually are, you need to read this post.

That means you, dear.

YES, Mrs. Favog, Kellie Pickler really is as with it as a sack of sand -- it's not an act -- and her number is legion. And apparently quite a few short-bus riders live in and around Rayville, La.

Here is a story from Tuesday's edition of the Monroe News-Star and neither they, nor I, are making this stuff up:

A Rayville man was sentenced to more than four years in prison after he helped his wife pose as a CIA agent and they swindled more than half a million dollars from friends and family.

Brent Eric Finley, 38, of Rayville, was sentenced Monday in federal court in Monroe to serve 51 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release.

His wife, Stacey Finley, was sentenced in August to spend 63 months in prison and both are ordered to jointly pay restitution in the amount of $873,786.94. Both were convicted on wire fraud charges.

U.S. Attorney Donald W. Washington said the case began after officials received information that the Finley’s had devised a scheme to defraud their friends and family of money.

The couple reportedly convinced numerous people that Stacey Finley was a CIA agent and with her contacts she could schedule a medical scan of the victims’ bodies by satellite imaging that would detect any hidden medical problems.

After the medical problems were detected, the Finley’s convinced their victims that secret agents would administer medicine to them as they slept in exchange for payment.

F*** The Golden Compass

I don't want to hear another thing about the evils of the flick aimed at making your kid an atheist -- namely The Golden Compass.

Oh, no. I'm not defending the film. Philip Pullman has been quite explicit in what he's all about. To wit, "My books are about killing God." And The Golden Compass is based on the first in a trilogy of Pullman's God-killing books.

If you're a Christian, and you have kids, and you send them off to see The Golden Compass, that's what you're getting.

"My books are about killing God." And about portraying a fictionalized, twisted version of the Catholic Church in a horrible light. That's what I'm saying.

Still, it's a free country, and New Line Cinema is free to make toxic films about toxic subject matter -- just as Americans are free to poison their minds and their souls. Willingly or ignorantly.

Free will reigns supreme. Free will . . . a gift to mankind by the deity Phil Pullman thinks he can "kill," because He's already dead or, more precisely, never existed.

BUT I'M NOT HERE to talk about that. I'm here to rip the boycotters a new one.

Like I said, I don't want to hear another thing about The Golden Compass. Especially from Christians.

Why is that?

That's because being against stuff is not enough -- our faith is no mere negation of whatever peeves Christians at the moment.

That's also because Christians -- and their denuded culture -- have been too dense, shortsighted, narrow-minded and intellectually sclerotic to come up with much that's any better for the past 20 years, ever since Walker Percy penned his last novel, The Thanatos Syndrome.

Even then, I've had a Catholic bookstore manager tell me a priest once warned him not to stock those "dirty" Percy novels. Ah, Jansenism . . . the heresy that keeps on puckering you up, Buttercup.

Likewise, when Flannery O'Connor was still cranking out masterpiece short stories, all the little old ladies wanted to know why she couldn't write something "nice."

Well, Christians can't create stuff that's uniformly "nice" and inoffensive because that inevitably leads to a flaccid catalog of mediocre crap. Propaganda for Jesus, as it were. And if Jesus needs an army of hack propagandists to do His bidding, He isn't worthy of our worship.

CHRISTIANS ARE OBLIGED to illuminate the truth, which will lead to the Truth.

I say "obliged" quite deliberately. We are "obliged" to be witnesses to the truth, which often neither is nice nor inoffensive, because He Who was Truth hung on a cross until He was dead to ransom our sorry asses out of a Hell of our own choosing.

And I guess -- so far as our sins ended up being the death of Jesus . . . each and every one of us, Christ killers all -- Philip Pullman really is "killing God" with every book he foists off on a lemminglike public. But he couldn't -- and can't -- stop Easter Sunday. The tomb is still empty.

Mr. Pullman is obliged to create art which reflects the truth. Instead, he spins clever tales of the Big Lie.

Christians are obliged to create beautiful things, provocative works, great art that is true to themselves and true to the Truth. Instead, by and large, the world gets vapid junk in the name of Jesus.

FRANKLY, I think crap for Christ is way worse than broadsides against Christ. With broadsides against Christ, at least you can consider the source.

But when you have Christians' cultural defecations in Christ's holy name -- Left Behind, anyone? Or those truly pious and truly awful "classic" Catholic films on EWTN? -- it's easy for people to get the idea that Christ is shit. Philip Pullman couldn't pull that one off in his wildest atheist dreams.

Of course, you won't be hearing a recitation of this particular rant on Catholic radio. Or on your local evangelical "praise and worship" station. Or on the Catholic News Service wire.

See, I said a bad word. I wasn't being pleasant. Some superannuated citizen might be taken with the vapors . . . no matter how therapeutic those vapors might ultimately be.

Walker Percy, pray for us.

Flannery O'Connor, you pray, too.

A matter of perspective

This from The Washington Post is enough perspective to put me squarely on the side of the world on this question.

Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? Are You Dumber Than a Box of Rocks?

Bless her heart, I'm sure past American Idol finalist Kellie Pickler is a fine singer and a sweet girl. And her life story is an inspiring tale of overcoming long, long odds.

BUT GODAMIGHTY, how did that girl graduate from North Stanly High School in New London, N.C.?

Seriously, y'all, somethin' ain't right there. And after watching this clip from Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?, I'm thinking love child of Ernest T. Bass and Charlene Darling.

Or somethin' like that.

Beer makes you stupid

It's official: According to this Associated Press story, college students really are stupider than a bunch of chimpanzees.

One memory test included three 5-year-old chimps who'd been taught the order of Arabic numerals 1 through 9, and a dozen human volunteers.

They saw nine numbers displayed on a computer screen. When they touched the first number, the other eight turned into white squares. The test was to touch all these squares in the order of the numbers that used to be there.

Results showed that the chimps, while no more accurate than the people, could do this faster.

One chimp, Ayumu, did the best. Researchers included him and nine college students in a second test.

This time, five numbers flashed on the screen only briefly before they were replaced by white squares. The challenge, again, was to touch these squares in the proper sequence.

When the numbers were displayed for about seven-tenths of a second, Ayumu and the college students were both able to do this correctly about 80 percent of the time.

But when the numbers were displayed for just four-tenths or two-tenths of a second, the chimp was the champ. The briefer of those times is too short to allow a look around the screen, and in those tests Ayumu still scored about 80 percent, while humans plunged to 40 percent.

That indicates Ayumu was better at taking in the whole pattern of numbers at a glance, the researchers wrote.

"It's amazing what this chimpanzee is able to do," said Elizabeth Lonsdorf, director of the Lester E. Fisher Center for the Study and Conservation of Apes at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago. The center studies the mental abilities of apes, but Lonsdorf didn't participate in the new study.

BUT LET'S SEE how smart that chimp would be if he'd downed half a bottle of wine, 11 beers and two mixed drinks today.

Uh huh. Damn straight.

Video of the week

Pick the version of events in the Saga of the Michigan Man you care to believe, but what it all came down to was LSU Coach Les Miles pulling the plug on an old, dear dream that was threatening to sink the football dream of a bunch of young men. His young men -- LSU Men.

And their dream did not die amid an ESPN hellstorm, nor did it die when a crippled up Louisiana State squad took on Tennessee in the Southeastern Conference title game.

NOW THE MICHIGAN MAN and his LSU Men -- after the most improbable chain of insane events during a wild and woolly season-finale weekend -- chase a renewed dream. A national championship. A dream so far out of reach that its sudden resurrection was marginally less stunning than ol' Lazarus stumbling out of his tomb a couple of millennia ago.

On one hand, the old Michigan Man can't go home again. Neither can many of us.

Things change, dreams die painful deaths and, sometimes, better ones show up after the funeral is concluded and the dearly departed's memory has been toasted.

Les Miles has a national championship to win against -- deliciously for an old Michigan Man -- the Ohio State University. And win it he just might.

As an LSU Man. Geaux Tigers.

Fans have Miles to go to be worthy of Les

MSNBC news item:

Les Miles insists he will remain LSU’s football coach despite all the speculation he would bolt for Michigan.

“I am the head coach at LSU. I will be the head coach at LSU,” Miles said Saturday. “I have no interest in talking to anybody else.”

LSU athletic director Skip Bertman said Miles and LSU chancellor Sean O’Keefe already have worked out a contract “they’re happy with,” but it has not yet been signed.

Wearing a purple tie, standing and gesturing, Miles angrily made his announcement two hours before the No. 5 Tigers played No. 14 Tennessee in the Southeastern Conference championship game.

“I’ve got a championship game to play, and I’m excited about the opportunity of my damn strong football team to play,” he said. “It’s unfortunate that I had to address my team with that information this morning.

Miles said an erroneous ESPN report that he was going to Michigan prompted him to speak to his players and the media.

“I represent me in this issue, please ask me after. I’m busy,” he said.

Here are some selected comments following the Times-Picayune story about Miles staying:

* DAMN..DAMN YOU SKIP!!! LET HIM GO ..DAMN!!

* he only wins because he has sabans recruits ...... you give him a new contract and then he starts losing ....... idiots .....

* OH NOOOOOOOOOOOO, Let Him GOOOOOOOOOOOOO !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

* Big Frank , as others, that , ley's face it, when Saban's recruits are gone, so is the dream! Miles is NOT a Coach by any means. He is where he is because he has been able to get 110% out of Saban's guys. Predictions are no better than 7-5 next year and that's on the high end. One more thing, Saban or Spurrier was here. Perrilloux's Hoodlum azz would be GONE!

GOOD GRIEF. I'll say here what I said over on the T-P:

How come no one ever bitched about Nick Saban winning with Gerry DiNardo's recruits? All some gobstopperingly moronic LSU fans want to do is run off a coach who has put together three straight 10-win seasons, something that even the Almighty Saban couldn't do.

If that's how you treat Les Miles, who the hell with any sense would WANT to come to LSU . . . except to get a sweet contract, make some money, bolster the resume and gut it out in a Third World country for three years before hauling butt to greener pastures.

Miles is displaying a little loyalty to Louisiana -- probably foolishly, being the man DOES have a wife and school-age kids to worry about. Any look at all the good rankings and the bad ones will tell you that Louisianians regularly manage to do what even a dog won't -- s*** in his own bed.

And the coach you want to run off still sticks with LSU and with Louisiana. I hope his compensation package amply takes that into account.

Frankly, as a Louisiana native and LSU grad who in 1988 hauled butt to Nebraska (where government generally works and people generally care), I am thrilled that my "other team" is getting Bo Pelini. Y'all didn't want him, but he's going to go to work for Tom Osborne down in Lincoln, and he's going to win, and win, and win, and win some more.

Suckers.

The tragedy of Louisiana is that people who are so idiotic as to want to run off a perennial 10-win coach probably aren't a tiny group of fringe lunatics.

The bigger tragedy of Louisiana is that people that damn stupid are allowed to vote. And it shows.

Jena: The gift that keeps on giving

The latest installment in Nooses Across America, this time from the Omaha World-Herald:

The U.S. Army Reserve is investigating allegations that an officer hung a noose in the Council Bluffs office of an African-American sergeant and Iraq war veteran, Army officials said Friday.

Sgt. Tiffany Robinson filed a complaint alleging that her commander, 1st Lt. Harold Hessig, a part-time reservist who also works as a Bellevue police detective, left a rope tied in a noose hanging from a pipe in their office in October.

Robinson, who served in Iraq with the Reserve's 784th Transportation Company, requested transfer to a new assignment, saying she felt that her civil rights had been violated.

"I felt it very offensive and psychologically damaging. I don't feel safe," she wrote in the complaint sent to Army Reserve officials.

Except to confirm that an investigation is in progress, Reserve officials declined to comment Friday.

"There is a formal investigation into these allegations that is currently under way. Until that is complete, we can't comment on the case," said Lt. Col. Kathy Klein, spokeswoman for the Reserve's 89th Regional Readiness Command in Wichita, Kan., which oversees Nebraska Reserve units.

Hessig did not return calls to the Bellevue Police Department seeking comment. A home phone listing for him had been disconnected.

Bellevue Police Chief John Stacey said that in light of the Army investigation, the department has opened an internal investigation into Hessig's actions. He remains on duty while the inquiry continues, Stacey said.

In Hessig's 7½ years with the Police Department, no complaints have been lodged against him, Stacey said. He said Hessig had compiled an "exemplary record."

Stacey said Hessig left the department in 2004 to serve with the Army Reserve in Afghanistan, returning in 2006.

"I'm a little shocked they'd consider him at the center of this," the chief said. "I think they'll probably find out they've got the wrong guy, but that's what investigations are for. We'll find out."

According to her complaint, Robinson walked into her Reserve office in October to find Hessig and another soldier fashioning a noose out of a piece of rope that Robinson had found earlier in a file cabinet.

Robinson said she felt uncomfortable and left the office but "brushed it off" after she returned and didn't see the noose anywhere.

She said she found the noose hanging from a heating pipe in the office the following Monday.

"I don't know what the intentions were behind it or if it was racial at all, but I am very offended. I don't feel safe at home or at work," Robinson wrote in her complaint. "I don't think Lt. Hessig would intentionally do anything to hurt me, but under the circumstances I can't be 100 percent sure."

Robinson said she received several apologies from Hessig but that his attempts at reconciliation began to worry her when he showed up unannounced at her home.