Thursday, August 27, 2015

Were serious signs overlooked?

I was watching news coverage of the mental state of the former TV news colleague in Virginia who killed two reporters of WDBJ-TV live on camera yesterday then uploaded his murders to Facebook like an ISIS terrorist. Other colleagues said he interpreted everything as racial. It's unfortunate that someone didn't spot his problem--or maybe they did and were afraid to say it out loud for fear of being called racist.

About 45 years ago, and I still haven't forgotten her, a pleasant, plump, middle aged woman joined our adult education committee at First Community Church. She mentioned she was a faculty wife and her husband taught at Ohio State. There was the usual chit chat and joking as we all introduced ourselves, and suddenly her face clouded, and she said (paraphrase), "I know you are all in on it; you know about my husband's affair; you're covering for him; I won't stand for it."

We were all just stunned. Apologies were made for anything offensive we'd said, the meeting proceeded, but after the meeting we all got away from her as quickly as possible. Of course, we were not at fault—she was obsessed with her marital problems and decided we all knew.

No comments: