Saturday’s shooting spree and attempted assassination in Arizona is a story of senseless violence, mental instability, but also bravery. But also also, it is a story of dads being dads. Dads: Why won’t they leave you alone? Why are they constantly asking you to turn down the music up there? Why are they always trying to mess up your murderous rampage at the local grocery store? GOD, DADS, YOU JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND. Obviously, as Jared Loughner shows us, trying to plan out an assassination when you still live with your parents is the worst. “Get out of my room! I’m trying to work on the grisly murder of a government official and random bystanders! Jeeeeeeeeeez! Can’t I get a little privacy?”
Mysterious black bag in hand, Jared Loughner ran into the desert, his angry father in futile pursuit of his truck.
On the morning of the shooting, a mumbling Jared Loughner fled after his father asked him why he was removing a black bag from the trunk of a family car, said Nanos and Rick Kastigar, chief of the department’s investigations bureau. Investigators are still searching for the bag.
The black bag was full of feelings his dad couldn’t understand, okay? GET OUT OF HIS LIIIIIIIIFE. WHO CARES WHERE HE IS GOING?!
One close high school friend who requested anonymity to avoid the publicity surrounding the case said he would wait outside 10 minutes for Jared to leave the house when they were going out. When Jared would get into the car, he’d say that it took so long because his parents were hassling him.
Ugh, parents, right? They always want to know where you’re going, and if you’re going to kill any members of Congress while you’re there.
And of course, like every young American man in this modern economy who isn’t a gaywad — especially if he is inane and insane like this one — his only worthwhile skill is stuffing khakis with mayo and sandwich fixin’s.
Loughner also jumped from paid job to job because he couldn’t get along with co-workers, according to the close high school friend who requested anonymity. Employers included a Quiznos sandwich shop and Banana Republic, the friend said.
On his application at the animal shelter, he listed customer service work at Eddie Bauer.
But he didn’t let all of this cramp his style. Jared Loughner was pure cool.
McKinley recalled that once he yelled to some children on the street: “I’m coming to get you!”
What a pathetic monster. And not the good kind of pathetic monster, like King Kong. The Donkey Kong kind. The scum kind. [AP]
{ 137 comments }
Sarah Palin's humility was in the black bag.
Nah, if that was Sarah's black bag she would have slipped it over a detainee's head at Gitmo.
That, or it would have been Coach, purchased on RNC credit-card.
We must know more of this black bag — material, including thickness & sheen, pattern, & presence or lack of handles — to ascertain precisely from what cranny of Palin's it arises.
Can we buy those and make them haute?
I'm guessing that it will never be found then.
So you're saying the bag was empty…cause she gots no humility.
Perhaps a screenshot from the beginning of the "Black or White" music video would be more apropos, no?
Not really.
McCauley Culkin? George Feckin' WENDT? The fuck was THAT all about?
Leave Sarah Palin alone! Stop the lamestream media's blood libel. Wait, what are we talking about again?
Doesn't matter. You should yell that in every situation, except when someone is writing Sarah a check.
We should all send her a check with the reason Blood Libel and she if cashes it.
Dads, and how they're always up in your grill or shit or whatever it is the youngs say today (sorry, when I was young, I watched The Young Ones and listened to Forever Young, and was well-hung) and never give you space when you want to go shoot up the place or masturbate in peace to the fashion magazines because your parents have confiscated all of the Oui and Chic and weird bondage mags that you stole from your uncle's garage and, um, this isn't all about me, is it? Or so I've heard.
I wonder if Jared's dad told him that he would always be "Weak and Worthless."
"Do you know what happens to boys who don't work hard? The Langoliers will get them!"
A postal worker neighbor lady kinda refudiated that story on shouty Keith's show last night, but you know postal workers…
Only a postal worker would know why someone went postal.
I've mentioned a couple of times that I was at the Post Office in Tucson in 1998 when a crazy person started shooting into the lobby. Afterwards, while we were waiting for the police to interview all of us witnesses, I overheard one of the postal workers say to another, "Well, for once it wasn't one of US with the gun."
Um. I guess you had to be there.
Ugh. Guess that I means that I should sift through the refuse in teen bedrooms to ensure there are no WMDs. Parenthood sucks.
Teens' bedrooms are normally considered WMDs, even when they don't house any actual weapons.
If my daughter's bedroom contained a WMD, the world would be safe. She'd never be able to find it while she was still mad enough to use it.
What's that? A Twisted Sister pin? ON YOUR UNIFORM?!
Dee Snider is a noted Republican — supported Arnold in the California re-call, stumped for Mc Cain-Palin — so no way Loughner the Liberal would listen to anything like that.
As an old fuck with three kids, I think if you are still trying to straighten up your offspring at age 22, maybe you should have tried a little fucking harder sometime in the past, oh, 22 years.
SometimesAlways 'sorry' is nowhere close enuff.Or at the very least, if your 22 year old is showing symptoms of serious mental illness, and has been expelled from community college because he's creeping out everyone there, you might want to get him some professional help?
That said, maybe they tried? There's a lot we still don't know–and god forbid we should point out that, under the fascist Nazi HCR that Jeffords voted for, a mentally-ill 22 year old could at least be covered by his parents' insurance….
It's hard for a parent to commit a child of legal age and doesn't schizophrenia manifest round about legal age?
yes and yes. my older brother changed into a monster at 20, severe mental illness with psychosis.my mother tried everything she could(dad far away alcoholic) we were poor.he never hurt anyone badly(except our hearts). police finally picked him up in DC for screaming down manhole covers. he wouldnt stay in the hospital, they'd give him heavy drugs that didn't work for so long, he had no health insurance. after 10 years of hell for everyone he finally got the right meds, became himself again, got better and is still better.
but my mother was never the same.
sorry for the buzzkill. but living with a this is not funny because you try and try and if you're poor its thorzeine and gtfo, next…
I'm glad he's better. It must be absolute hell to watch someone you know and love change like that.
Health Care. God this touches on so many issues and picks at so many scabs. Seems like everyone around him knew this kid needed help but he didn't get it. One would think if a community, a society, saw this kid and knew, without out a doubt that he needed help… Oh, right, that's socialism, or communism or what ever the fuck were supposed to hate this week. Fuck the village raising a child, everyone is an individual who should sink or swim on their own. Only a very few of the sinkers blow up this bloody bad.
The sad thing is that people of that age are sort of in limbo. They are legally adults so parents cannot FORCE them to accept help, but the parent generally feels responsible for taking care of the offspring who clearly needs help.
Sure, I was an angry, incomprehensible loser for a short while. People go through phases, we indulge them when they're young. But throw in police, drug charges, baffled teachers, wary peers, willful failure, self-destruction, agent-of-chaos ramblings, furtive movements and whatever else all leading to a black bag, and then flight from confrontation over said bag…
Well, my old man would have called police on the spot, and then offered to help. Maybe this guy did, too. Maybe his sack of shit son cared not at all for anything he said. Maybe he brazenly defied them, cursed them, said horrible things to them, a truly incorrigible monster. My old man was sufficiently old school that he would have kicked my ass, disowned me and started my journey through the system himself, once he got to that point. And getting him to that point, I would have deserved every bit of it.
The point is most families conclusively intervene, somehow, somewhere in the process, well before the black bag shows up. I confess a morbid curiosity as to how that never happened in this case.
I will hug all the little children today. Be forewarned.
NO TOUCHING!
Parents just don't understand.
Does this mean Will Smith gets a little blame for this? Because it's about time he bears some responsibility for making white people say "jiggy."
I used to work at a school that had a fashion design class as an elective.
So apparently sometimes you CAN go to school to have a fashion show.
At least he just used the family Porsche to pick up pre-teen runaways, not to drive to political rallies to commit mass murder.
I'm honestly surprised the Fresh Prince didn't try to sabotage Barack's run in '08, considering FP's wish to be the first black President.
As a person of the pinkish persuasion, I'm down with that. Or jiggy with it, if you will.
And you just know Obamacare's provisions allowing parents to keep their children on their own insurance 'till they turn 26 years old is going to create 10,000 more Jared Loughners.
How many more congressmen must die before we repeal Obamacare!?!?
Man, I can't believe Fox News hasn't tried that line out yet. Can I sell it to them?
Never mind his father, it looks like his mom is Leslie Knope:
"Amy Loughner got a job with the county parks and recreation department just before Jared was born, and since at least 2002 has been the supervisor for Roy P. Drachman Agua Caliente Park on the outskirts of the city"
The hole will be filled one day!
Queen of the Gays, also.
also, http://vimeo.com/7359674
I for one am tired of Eddie Bauer and Banana Republic acting as breeding grounds for tomorrow's angsty teens and mass murderers.
He doesn't quite fit the profile of a typical Banana Republic employee. Maybe it was an outlet store.
"Seconds and Irregulars" seems about right.
You just know he was rejected by Abercrombie&Fitch, thereby setting the horror in motion.
They take what they can get in Arizona, they only pay 7.35 an hour usually with a 25 cent increase after 3 months. You are not going to get stable people working for that amount of money because take home pay is only about 900 a month and rent in Tucson on a single bedroom is 600.
Damn straight. Keep 'em all at Abercrombie. You can't hide shit under a half-tee and skinny jeans.
The trannies try though, god bless them.
Well, obviously something was wrong in that house. The kid is clearly schizophrenic or schizoid, and should have seen medical care a long time ago.
I can identify with him. My dad was always saying "If you murder innocent people in a cold blooded rampage, it's going to go on your permanent record!"
His dad is apparently real nosey with asking questions about nondescript black bags. Leave the kid alone. He's worse than "Ted" Theodore Logan's dad. BOGUS!!!!
Unfortunately this kid needed more than a little extra hassling. Fortunately that is mostly doing the job for me.
When are we going to realize that the sort of incendiary pepper jack and buffalo sauce that Quizno's deals out day after day has consequences?
This kind of stuff doesn't happen to people that handle Arby's Horsey Sauce.
And of course, like every young American man in this modern economy who isn’t a gaywad
Are you saying the gays can't stuff their khakis with mayo and sandwich fixin's – that's discrimination and blood libel!
My Guitar Wants To Kill Your Mama
Frank Zappa
You know, your mama and your daddy
Saying I'm no good to you
They call me dirty from the alley
Till I don't know what to do
I get so tired of sneakin' around
Just to get to your back door
I crawled past the garbage and
Your mama jumped out, screamin'
"Don't come back no more"
I can't take it
My guitar wants to kill your mama
My guitar wants to kill your mama
My guitar wants to burn your dad
I get real mean when it makes me mad
Frank Zappa never did drugs but smoked cigarettes like a fiend, died of a 10 lb prostate, someone write a song about that.
Later I tried to call you
Your mama told me you weren't there
She told me don't bother to call again
Unless I cut off all my hair
I get so tired of sneakin' around
Just to get to your back door
I crawled past the garbage and
Your mama jumped out, screamin'
"Don't come back no more"
Later I tried to call you
Your mama told me you weren't there
She told me don't bother to call again
Unless I cut off all my hair
I get so tired of sneakin' around
Just to get to your back door
I crawled past the garbage and
Your mama jumped out, screamin'
"Don't come back no more"
My guitar wants to kill your mama
My guitar wants to kill your mama
My guitar wants to burn your dad
I get real mean when it makes me mad
dream of you each morning, dream of you each night…
Great Googly-Moogly!
Well, yeah, the dude was walked out of Red Robin.
Can you imagine how embarrassing it was for a guy to be fired from a restaurant that features FUCKING UNLIMITED FRENCH FRIES???
No wonder he went on a rampage….
Those motherfuckers discontinued the salmon & chips. BURN IT DOWN, JARED.
One of my summer jobs this year I waited tables for a small bistro and soon after I started we had to walk a guy out after he came in with an unclean shirt 2 days in a row – think permanent pit stains – and he came back a few weeks ago and got arrested for menacing with the over sized pepper grinder they have there.
All he wanted was a Pepsi?
Just one Pepsi….
And SHE WOULDN'T GIVE IT TO ME!
He thought he wanted a Pepsi. Unlike Mike Muir, though, this guy was actually pretty fucking crazy.
normal people don't act that way!
This will be a boon to all those "schools for the troubled" that advertise in the back of Sunset magazine. Forget the blather about horse riding and self-esteem. All they need to do is show this prick's mugshot along with the caption "You want your kid to turn out like this?"
Maybe they should have used that Total Transformation Program that's always advertising on the cable TV and claims they can tell you how to magically make your children behave.
All the hip psychopaths are sporting Hello Kitty bags these days.
You gotta fight
For your right
To base your language on an infinite source creating an infinite currency allowing powers of mind control to evade control by the government over your grammar as a limited form of currency that would force you to accept payment of any debt in a currency not based on gold or silver.
Infinite win.
The whole Loughner family failed to consider how their actions would impact Sarah Palin.
And as we all know, that is the true tragedy here
Poppa don't preach!
And Wal-mart conveniently sells low cost 9mm Glock ammo. Save money, live better.
They've got you coming and going.
I just wanna say that this post is epically brilliant.
So reminiscent of Mama Grizzly Sarah Palin trying to keep Bristol from getting pregnant. "Just give him a blow job", she was heard to shout as she dropped her daughter off at the Motel 6 on highway 43. "Or anal — boys like the anal, you 'butt-cha'!" And laughed at her own witticism.
Claiming Boehner is drunk is just like blood libel!
What do you expect? He refused a breathalyzer. They had to do his BAC, then.
I read that as "Boehner is drunk on just Bloody Mary libations."
My old man only calls after he's had three martinis and he can be pretty annoying, but never enough for me to open the gun safe.
ain't that the crux of it all…you have them until about school-age and then slowly begin to lose influence, all the while society is putting more and more responsibility (i.e. blame) on you for how your kids are turning out…
Yup.
good thinking. all my backpacks and computer bags are bright colors, but the only black one I have is a range bag that says "glock shooting sports" on it. prolly should leave that one in the closet…
Clearly we should not politicize this by mentioning that access to decent healthcare would almost definitely have prevented this — we should politicize it by insisting that every crazy bastard should be armed to the teeth.
Mental health care is for pussies, and isn't American. Only Jesus can make you right in the head! Also, infringing on the 2nd Amendment Rights of the criminally insane would be a step too far against our Liberty (or Mexican drug cartels, which like corporations are citizens too I guess). If you don't let crazy people have guns, only…wait, the fool can't be fooled again.
Right wing wants it both ways. 2nd Amendment Über Alles + We Should Be Doing More About The Crazees (But Not In An Obamacare Kind Of Way, More A Gitmo Kind Of Way Like They Used To Do Through The Nineteenth Century And Still Basically Do Everywhere Except For A Few Of The Larger Cities).
fried philiippino bicep or gtfo
CRAWWWWWWLING IN MY SKIIIIIIIN
YOUR WOOOUNDS THEY WILL NOT HEALLLLLL
SHUUUUUUUUTTTTTT UP WHEN I'M TALKING TO YOU
SHUUUUUUUUTTTTTT UP WHEN I'M TALKING TO YOU
And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon
Little boy blue and the man on the moon
When you comin' home son?
I don't know when, but we'll get together then dad
You know we'll have a good time then
Time and time again you get these stories about people knowing full well that Loughner went off the deep end and was a threat to others and time and time again you find out that each one of them failed to do anything meaningful to help him.
I mean, my cousin developed schizophrenia right when he started his 20s and he had a very supporting and loving family and he ended up killing himself because of the voices about a year ago. It doesn't always stop them from being dangerous to themselves or others but nobody even gave a shit about Loughner, did they?
The details are still sketchy but as stated above illnesses like schizophrenia tend to not manifest until early adulthood when parents no longer have a legal right to force treatment on their child. Unfortunately no one seemed to put together all the pieces with him being kicked out of school, every job, etc. I think a 5150 is only declared when someone is an direct threat to themselves or others and he may have always come in under that threshold.
I have a hard time saying the parents didn't care about him. They were more likely unable to take appropriate action.
It's more the friends and professors and students that just wanted him to go away. I read the neighbor's assessment of the parents' situation and it's utterly heartbreaking. I just think we can do more for these people…and maybe the current laws are a major problem.
I also thought it was fitting that a friend of his said that once he stopped smoking pot he went *really* crazy…
I've heard a bunch of folks on radio and tv interviews say that "the system" or some such organization should've seen and reacted to the warning signs. However, when I was in college I had several friends seek counseling for depression and the reaction from school authorities focused on limiting their own liability — thus the "help" these folks got was a recommendation to drop out, and maybe a list of groups that might help supplement their psych care.
Not that colleges should be responsible for everyone's care or even for reporting certain things to the police, necessarily, but their default response — please be a danger to yourself and others off our campus — is hardly the kind of help you might expect. And I'm sure they're not the only institution that looks out for their own interest that way.
I told my husband the only requirements of him as a dad are to keep his daughter off the pole & his son from being someone's bitch in prison. (Not murdering a bunch of people is kind of implied.)
I know it's a pretty low bar to set, but, hey, parenting without nannies & a gillion dollars is hard.
Sage parenting advice worth following. Suck it, Dr. Spock.
They don't come with instructions, either.
I always told Mrs. Puck this about my daughter: If I get her dropped off at school on time and she is not physically ON FIRE, I have done my job.
Thank you.
You dad! I learned it by watching YOU!!!!
Jedipus the King.
Jeffery Dahmer has been dead since 1994. Must have been a really old show.
Did I say "the other night"? I meant 17 years ago or so. I must have fallen asleep or something.
Let's do the time-warp again!
Don't worry, they rerun that show all the time. But just in case you are jumping, you need a Constant – someone present in both timeframes, to keep you sane. Perhaps Betty White.
The NYT is reporting, "“Jared felt nothing existed but his subconscious,” Mr. Gutierrez said. “The dream world was what was real to Jared, not the day-to-day of our lives.”
“He would ask me constantly, ‘Do you see that blue tree over there?’ He would admit to seeing the sky as orange and the grass as blue,” Mr. Gutierrez said."
That's a little more than teenage angst and rebellion…
Somehow the Nolan Brothers will be blamed for this. Because we need some new scapegoats, all the old ones are stale.
That's Scarlet-fucking-Begonia's, for chrissake.
My wife just sent a watercolor with an orange sky off to a show. But I'm always all like "this is the end of the gun to point" with her.
There is no way this guy could have made it all the way through Alice in Wonderland let alone Mein Kampf or any Karl Marx.
Well, The Communist Manifesto isn't much of a book. More of a pamphlet. It's not like he read and was influenced by the Critique of Critical Criticism.
"…on his application at the animal shelter…"
This is odd. Aspiring sociopaths typically don't like animals so much. Maybe he wanted to do the euthanizin'?
Why couldn't the bag just have been full of giant black dildoes? Then the whole thing might have had a happy ending, except for some lingering soreness.
"Many Dildos Brandished Aggressively at Member of Congress"
Healthcare town halls redux or
Lindsay Graham's average day
My pappy said "Son you're gonna drive me to drinkin', if you don't stop drivin' that hot rod Lincoln"
"I carried a guitar and you! … You carry that, that, that …. M-16! Where do you come from?! What do you want to do with your life?!"
Bleh. This is what happens when opportunity societies give parents the opportunity to treat their childrens' debilitating mental illness the way they want to, and they find themselves woefully unprepared.
"Loughner also jumped from paid job to job because he couldn’t get along with co-workers(.) Employers included a Quiznos sandwich shop and Banana Republic, the friend said."
Sounds like part of my own resume. Dammit, why didn't my high school guidance counselor recommend I try political assassination?
Political assassination? Isn't that a major in Conservative Arts?
Still time to get in on the ground floor.
He was going to start a Twitter called "Shit My Dad Provoked Me To Do."
But then he didn't get high.
It takes a village to raise an assassin.
I noticed that, too! How much do you think he had to drink before breakfast today? Not that I am one to judge drinking before breakfast.
Either a) not enough.or b) too much.
You failed to mention the most critical piece of information AP gathered for this story: the exact dollar amount per hour Loughner's mother makes as a supervisor in the Parks Department.
If you don't get a god damned job before sundown, we're shipping your ass off to military school with that god damned Finklestein shit kid, son of a bitch!
Oh, I'm so there. And glad for it, now.
A kid can turn out fine if he has supportive friends or supportive family members, if he has neither, watch the hell out.
Many living things thrive when anxiety and want are absent. Supportive friends and family can help eliminate those aspects.
Yeah, if you are nice with them when they are about to close ask them for some in a cup. They usually will, because they throw it away.
I'm having trouble with the crazy factor. We're splitting hairs, maybe. Maybe it doesn't matter how or why. Reasons aside, if someone's acting like that, the doctors are there to discover the how and why, and treat it. His parents' job and salary information makes it clear we're talking about people with health plans, or at least an ability to get care.
It's one thing to indulge your porcine bratling's snowflake existence, but it's quite another after he loses 40 jobs, scares everyone he meets, freaks out the Army, talks of anarchy and gold standards, and hits up every Wal-Mart in town.
On another note, I've noticed my failure lately to even want to try to be funny, anywhere, and so I'm thinking of lurking for a while. I don't post well or enough to be missed, and I'm probably better off just playing guitar or shoveling snow.
This dude needed a brother or sister. Particularly one you share a room with as a child, and preferably one younger and more annoying than you. It's nothing like that situation that you learn to surpress the urge to kill someone.
Well at least we finally know exactly what it takes to get a thorough mental health evaluation and treatment in this country. And a glock and a box of ammo is a lot cheaper than the free-market' we hear so much about. I'm just a silver-lining kind of person. ;~)
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