A Children's Treasury Of Stupid Bloviating About The Isla Vista Murders

We've now entered the exciting "place blame on people you don't like" phase of the coverage of the shootings in Isla Vista last Friday, where bloggers, teevee news panelists, and other luminaries present their instant diagnoses of the culture-war issues truly to blame for the actions of a disturbed person with a several guns and a carload of ammunition. Here are just a few of the stupidest explanations of What It All Means (and yes, we have a feeling this will be Part One of many).

Let's start with a piece by Breitbart contributor Warner Todd Huston, who had this insight to share: Since creepy misogynist Elliot Rodger said in his awful video that "College is the time when everyone experiences those things such as sex and fun and pleasure" -- everyone except him -- then it makes perfect sense to blame colleges and their lax morality for the deaths of six innocent people Friday, because colleges are full of cultural relativists, hedonists, and hippies. Huston carefully refutes the assumptions in the 22-year-old's assertions:

You see, college is not "the time when everyone experiences those things such as sex and fun and pleasure." College is the time to learn, to study, and to prepare yourself for your life as an adult.

It isn’t a sexual play land where a guy should expect to act out a porn star fantasy.

You know, unless you're on the sportsball team. We suppose we could point out that Huston is responding to the words of a mass murderer, not anything from the UC Santa Barbara catalog, but he seems pretty sure that sex and fun and pleasure are in most schools' mission statements. After all, says Huston, those really have become the core principles of higher education. Just look at all the terribleness!

The colleges themselves reinforce this idiocy with foolish, anti-intellectual classes like “porn studies,” gay “studies,” and other such non-academic nonsense. The colleges also reinforce this moral corruption by allowing gay clubs, lesbian clubs, and celebrations such as “sex week,” sex toy displays, and visits to campus of people in unsavory and sometimes illegal professions.

That last bit just seems like a gratuitous slur on members of Congress, frankly. And of course, Huston says, our institutions of higher education "stopped being places of learning when America’s worst generation–the yippies and other cretins from the 60s generation–successfully destroyed the authority of the college administration."

And there's your money quote: The Berkeley Free Speech Movement killed those young men and women.

Next, we have Jim Hoft, the Stupidest Man on the Internet, who conclusively proved that Elliott Rodger is "Another far left mass murderer" by doing some deep investigative reporting: He looked at Rodger's YouTube page, and discovered that Roger subscribed to "the far left 'Young Turks' YouTube Channel." Say no more, Q.E.Derp. In addition, Rodger subscribed to several channels about Pokémon, video gaming, and cars, so it would be perhaps even more accurate to describe him as "another Pokémon-obsessed mass murderer." Remember, kids: Charizard KILLS.

John Hinderaker at Powerline has this explanation of Rodger's mental state:

some might argue that Rodger was a prototypical liberal male, only carried to a pathological extreme. Consider the profile: socially awkward, convinced of his own brilliance but not notably successful in life, hungry for revenge against those who have done better despite their obvious inferiority, eager to gain power over others, but through political influence rather than firearms–is this not a typical liberal on Twitter, or elsewhere on the internet?

Makes sense to us! Also, all conservatives are doodyheads.

Over on Fox News, "psychotherapist and reality show host" Dr. Robi Ludwig offered this diagnosis of Elliot Rodger, based on his video, manifesto, and Girl Troubles:

“When I was first listening to him, I was like, ‘Oh, he’s angry with women for rejecting him,’” she told Fox’s Jeanine Pirro. “And then I started to have a different idea: Is this somebody who is trying to fight against his homosexual impulses?”

We bet Ludwig is a terrific psychotherapist -- if she can figure out all that from a video and some news reports, just imagine how good she'd be when her patient is actually alive and talking to her.

Washington Post columnist Ann Hornaday has a slightly different spin -- the real killer is Hollywood, especially action movies of course, but also comedies:

How many men, raised on a steady diet of Judd Apatow comedies in which the shlubby arrested adolescent always gets the girl, find that those happy endings constantly elude them and conclude, ‘It’s not fair’?”

Damn you, manic pixie dream girls, for existing only in movies! We understand that there's also a big problem with chivalric romances inspiring dotty old men to put on armor and go attack windmills, too.

We're sure there will be more out there; so far, we haven't yet seen the shootings blamed on marriage equality, single mothers, undocumented immigrants, free school lunch, or the minimum wage, but you know it's just a matter of time.

 Follow Doktor Zoom on Twitter. He thinks maybe easy access to guns may have played a role, too.