I have had it with the coverage of the "Santa killer"/"Christmas nightmare" story.
They keep running these stupid, misleading headlines and it's making me crazy! From a description like that you may think a mall Santa went nuts and starting firing on shoppers or something. It's a cheap attention grabber but it's not the real story.
Bruce Jeffrey Pardo should not be remembered as the "Santa killer" --- he should be remembered as another statistic of domestic violence.
Ironically I haven't read that phrase in any articles but I HAVE seen "marital troubles" -- as if marital troubles is in ANY WAY adequate to describe, disguising yourself to gain entry to a home full of people, including your ex wife and her friends and relatives-- shooting everyone you can and setting fire to the home.
How in the sam HELL does that equate with marital problems? Marital problems are a dying sex life or too many bills. Not an ex who stalks, terrorizes and murders you and your family.
FUCKING NEWS MEDIA.
A story like this should have "domestic violence" in the TITLE. It should be noted that women are most vulnerable when they leave their abuser. And make no mistake, this man was an abuser. I'd bet my life on it. You don't pull stunts like this without having serious issues with control, entitlement, and violence.
If you hate your ex wife, you talk shit to your friends and hire a good lawyer, you don't gun down her family -- unless you are a violent, horrible person.
Some might say, 'Perhaps he was suffering from a serious mental illness and snapped.'
Far less likely.
This man planned carefully. He had $17,000 on him and an airline ticket to Canada. And the Santa suit was not only a sick, sadistic choice... it was also a tactical one. Apparently the house he invaded used to have neighbor show up dressed as Santa. So Mr. Pardo new the suit would gain him entry. He had the gun, the bullets and the gasoline ready to go. This was not a man who snapped, this was an execution. Retribution for a woman who had left him... who had gotten away... who had escaped his control. He was going to punish her.
This is merely the hundredth or so case (this year) of a woman being murdered by her intimate partner. Domestic violence against women is an epidemic. But we don't care. Even when the horror of it smacks us in the face, we ignore it. We want to sensationalize the freak-show, carnival nature. We want to talk about SANTA committing a holiday massacre.
And we want to forget that women in this country, while less likely to be violently murdered than men, are FAR MORE LIKELY to be murdered by those they call husband, lover, boyfriend.
And THAT is way more messed up than a man in a Santa suit wielding a weapon.
/end rant
Saturday, December 27, 2008
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5 comments:
I hadn't even heard of this story (I've been intentionally lowering my media intake for precisely this reason) - but holy shit...
That's beyond horrible.
Thank you for making this post, if for nothing else than because someone somewhere has to try to counter the stupid trading on tradgedy the media just loves to do.
Thank you <_ _>
I still think this guy might have deliberately tried to drown his own son... so he wouldn't have to pay support. His actions after the accident just seem like a big red flag to me.
As per your comment regarding mental illness, it is worth noting that mental illness is not an illness in the way that strep throat is. The definition of mental illness is plastic, controlled by society. If the killer is defined as mentally ill it is because we decided to call him ill, not because he caught a case of the murderous sociopathic husbands.
Perhaps, however, he has similar experiences to other victims that often lead people to a diagnosis of mental illness, such as abuse. Most likely, he has experienced or witnessed intense trauma and, unlike most victims, identified with the abuser (seeing the abuser as strong and himself as weak, to make this simple). As a result he may see the world as split into victims and predators, as many abusers do, and he wants to be the predator and doesn't understand that you can be neither. Is that an excuse? For this action, there is no excuse. There is barely even explanation.
Good call, and I absolutely agree with that assessment. I was horrified by this story and kept waiting, waiting...waiting [!] for the follow-up on what surely had to be a history of abuse, but it never came. You're right, that's boring and ordinary to the media. A 'Santa Massacre' is sensational.
sigh
More posts please!
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