If you’ve passed a TV set in the past few hours, you may have heard that some nutjob walked into the Discovery Channel building in Silver Spring, MD with a gun and possibly a bomb, and took hostages.
Apparently this is his plan to stop human overpopulation, war, pollution, and species extinction. He wants Discovery to air a game show. Oh, and CNN mentioned in passing that he’s an atheist.
So first of all, I hope the hostages are okay, that they get out safely, and that the hostage-taker gets the mental help he so obviously needs.
And secondly, a quick message to the gunman, James Lee:
Get off my team!
Basically, I want to condemn this act in no uncertain terms this. As, I would hope, any reasonable person would do.
I can only assume that the right-wingers and creationists are going to be making hay out of this for years to come, and I’m not looking forward to that.
Fuck.
Update, Wed Sep 1 17:53:44 2010: ABC news is reporting that Lee has been shot and killed by law enforcement, and that the hostages are safe.
Hurray for heroic law enforcement officers, atheist or god-fearing.
Maybe it’s because I grew up in the SF area, but my first thought was of Frank Chu.
Yeah, I said “get off my team” too, but for the environmentalist concerns. Aaagh. Dude. That was not a good plan. It’s sad that he’d been protesting the Discovery Channel for a while, and that there was no better way of addressing his mental health issues before things went like this. I’m glad that no one else was hurt.
Troublesome Frog:
Huh. I hadn’t heard of Frank Chu before.
Raven:
Yeah, I certainly can’t blame Lee for being concerned about overpopulation, pollution, or war. But obviously, terrorism isn’t the way to solve those problems.