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Don’t Call Him a Shooter.
Call Him a Schmuck
After yet another horrific shooting in which yet another creep grabs an all-too-available gun (Thanks, NRA!) and kills a bunch of innocents, I’d like to ask everyone to stop calling these jerks “killers” and “shooters,” which sounds macho and cool, like they’re participants in some kick-ass video game, and start calling them what they really are, which is “schmucks.”
“Schmuck” is a Yiddish word which means “contemptible person.” That’s more to the point, isn’t it? You could also use “putz,” which means “idiot.” Or go with the all-American “jerk.” Just stop describing these misfits as “gunmen” and “assassins,” which makes them sound tough and cool. In fact, stop describing them at all.
There’s something just plain wrong about the fact that we all know who Mark David Chapman is. After Lennon was gunned down, the newscasters should have led with, “A jerk just killed John Lennon. We’re not telling you anything else about him because he wants to be famous and we’re not gonna help him out.” End of story.
Instead, some twisted creep sees the orgy of coverage devoted to the latest jerk with a firearm and thinks “that could be me, on every television screen and front page in America!” And the next thing we know, it is.
