The Discovery Channel!? — Come ON!

Perhaps by now you’ve heard about the gunman who broke into the Discovery Channel Network, took hostages, and ultimately was shot by police, who did, to their credit, save the hostages.

Why?  Because the gunman was convinced The Discovery Channel was promoting overpopulation by doing specials on families with lots of children (and by lots, I mean 15, as opposed to 4).  The gunman posted on the internet on some social networking site, or perhaps his BLOG, that the Discovery Channel was contributing to the demise of our planet and we “must not let them get away with this!”

We?

Like the gunman and…the rest of us?

Really?

I guess what struck me about this story was that I wish I could say the state of mind of the gunman is rare.  But I’m not sure it is.

Let’s face it, this is a TOUGH time we are all living through.  Little things we normally might brush aside tend to get our blood boiling.  The uncertainty about … everything it seems … is starting to take its collective toll on … um … dare I say US?

It seems NO ONE has enough money, jobs, cellular coverage, RAM.  We are a people spending our nights clipping coupons and our days buying Ramen noodles…by the case.  Bankruptcies, prescription drug usage, and apparently, according to the gunman, irresponsible television programming are at an all time high.  More and more business cards are so generic I think it would be more specific and honest if we stopped wasting money on the cards and said to one another, “What do I do?  Well…what do you need to have done?!

I get it.  I am feeling the stress too.  I heard today that Wal-Mart is doing some kind of master redesign to ensure they keep their current customers — who use to shop at Kohl’s and Target — by investing money in their store’s…appearance?

And I could feel my non-anxious yoga-practicing self begin to tip heavily towards the going-postal kick-boxer end of the continuum.

Never a Wal-Mart fan (MY position has to do with the fact that they believe in censoring what we are allowed to READ but have no issue selling guns and ammo 24/7), you might say this news that Wal-Mart, the epitome of bad-for-the-planet company was going to take the profit they made off people just trying to keep their heads above water to REDECORATE their stores … got to me.  But I DID stop short of going to one of their stores, buying a gun and bullets they would gladly sell me, and taking a blue-aproned clerk in the book dept. hostage until they started stocking To Kill A Mockingbird!

I guess my point is this:  we are all under a LOT of stress.  We have less and less control in our lives.  Our futures are frighteningly uncertain.  But losing control and taking it out on the Discovery Channel folks, to me, is akin to taking it out on the creators of Animal Planet.

Come ON people!

We don’t have many rules left in society but I’d like to believe there is still an unstated rule that says:  we do NOT take hostages at The Discovery Channel,  Animal Planet, or whoever produces Wheel of Fortune.  They are NOT the enemy.

I am not sure WHO the enemy is, but I suspect if its some sort of business, its one that thinks our having access to guns is more important than having access to books.