Lucky Thirteen: thoughts on Jodie Whittiker

Right – o. . .

So they’ve done gone and done it. They’ve made Doctor Who a woman. They’ve been talking about it for a very long time, and now they’ve finally done it. Jodie Whittaker (whom I've had a devil of a time trying to spell) will be taking over from Peter Capaldi. Faithful readers - of whom you are legion - are just dying to know:

13

What do I think? 

Well, the first thing you’ve got to remember, dear readers, is that I really liked Capaldi, and am genuinely sorry to see him go. He’d really found his feet, had a wonderful new companion in Pearl Mackie’s Bill, and now it’s all being thrown out. I’d be grumpy and gloomy even if Tom Baker himself were to reprise the role. So I was bound to be a little frumpy no matter Who took over.

The next thing you’ve got to remember, is that one of things I liked so much about Peter Capaldi’s Doctor was his maturity. I was sick to bloody death of the cute young Tennant/Smith axis, and so was dismayed to see yet another youngster cast in the role. I suppose youthful facades don’t naturally exude infinite wisdom. So it was Whittaker’s relative youth that struck me more than her sex. . .

                                                                                      

Capaldi was awesome

You don’t believe me do you?

I know what you’re thinking. Come off it Steve, Doctor Who is a woman! Tell us what you REALLY think! Right. Well here it goes. . .

The fact is, this was a long time coming. Tom Baker himself floated the idea when he left  the role in 1981 – before Jodi Whittaker was even born. People have been calling for it. The stage has been set for it. Hints have been dropped right left and centre. There has been a lot of time to psychologically prep for it, and so really nothing terribly shocking about it. And, confronted with this reality, is there really anything so terrible about it?

 To clear the way, the best thing they did – they best thing they could possibly have done – was cast the marvelous Michelle Gomez as the Master. Her Marry Poppins-gone bad portrayal was far closer to the traditional Master than that idiotic characterization by John Simm (who apparently was a good Hamlet – again, I blame R.T Davies rather than Simm). In fact, if I were of a conspiratorial mind-set, I’d say they gave us Simm just so we’d welcome Gomez (and in turn welcome Whittaker)

Michelle Gomez: the best Missy since Anthony Ainley

(The very worst thing was to have the Doctor shoot a man just so we could watch a guy into-girl regeneration. The scene had no other purpose; it was off-screen politics intruding on story-telling, out of line with story logic and characterization, and remains unforgivable)

(Hinting that Clara Oswald was actually the Doctor all the time could be either the worst OR the best thing, depending on how you look at it – waking Scrooge-like from that nightmare, I was prepared to accept just about anyone else at all, male or female).

      

So the groundwork’s been laid out and it really isn’t such a shock. That, and the last couple years have restored my faith in the series. I’ve started enjoying it again, and thinking it’s not quite done with me yet. Under those circumstances, it’s easier to say “let’s give her a chance, and see what she does”.

Glad to see him gone. . .

Now, I’ll tell you what I don’t like: the smug, mocking tones of the commentariate, most of whom don’t give a rat’s ass one way or the other about Doctor Who.  They seem to take such glee in ridiculing the lonely fanboy who’s only trying to hold onto something near and dear to him (and who really isn’t as hostile to the idea as he’s been portrayed). I’ve actually got a lot of sympathy for that fanboy, and can assure you he will be won over if he sees that his show isn’t going away.

On the other hand, laughing and jeering at him will send him to the alt-right forums faster than a Weeping Angel. . .

As for myself, I am not going to be lectured by anybody on how I ought to feel. Not having it. Don’t even try.

The argument that this is just a fictional character in a fairly ridiculous scenario doesn’t impress me.

“It’s fiction! Why do you care?” they say.

I shrug. “If it’s fiction, what’s it to you?”

No no, for someone who’s been watching and internalizing this mythology since he was five, this sort of exchange just won’t do. 

There is of course a deeply rooted sexism infecting the culture in general and certain realms of fandom in particular, but there's a different (hopefully more fragile) sort of sexism going on here. It's more to do with anxieties over the direction of the program than the casting of the lead - which themselves stem from sexist notions of what a female lead necessarily implies.

Does that make any sense?

Let me tell you a story: 

As long as its not her!

Not long ago, I read column taking Sylvester McCoy to task for speaking out against a female Doctor. The author – I’m afraid I’ve forgotten who she was or what outlet she was writing for, so you’ll just have to take my word for it – outlined her vision for Doctor Who, which was poisonously incompatible with mine. Basically she wanted greater emphasis on relationships, and more romantic subplots. Exactly what I didn’t want.

See, human relationships are central to any good piece of fiction. But the Soaperatic treatment favoured by Russell T. Davies and others has always been toxic to me. Who’s sleeping with whom, who’s got a crush on whom, who’s angry with whom, who’s got together with whom – who gives a fuck? It strikes me as insufferably shallow and petty. (For the record, Moffat handles it a hundred times better). I mean, if the Daleks and Cybermen are killing millions of people outside, why should we care if Jackie and Pete Tyler get back together? Why does every companion need to develop the hots for the Doctor? As if the writers can’t imagine relationships and interactions taking any other form? It’s an approach that only values the gratification of the immediate base instinct – the gut reaction. Everyone’s emotional bordering on hysterical, and no one (except Donna’s Grandfather) has any imagination. 

I was always more interested in concepts, scenarios, and, yes, I admit it, action. I preferred stories that glorified critical thinking, with high-falutin’ philosophical pontificating and detailed story worlds. I liked suspense, mystery, internal logic and “whatthehellisthat?” curiosity. I couldn’t care less about the companion’s homelife.  If this approach occasionally neglected characterization, the injection of maudlin melodrama was surely no improvement.

So we’re confronted with two fundamentally incompatible visions, and the question becomes not who the Doctor is but what kind of fiction this is going to be. If, like me, you prefer the way it was, (and how it’s recently become again), you might get defensive and wonder why this writer can’t pick on other fictions more to her liking.

Ah, but here’s the thing, here’s the rub: why should a female Doctor symbolize that vision, but not this one?  That author outlined her own preferences – but she’s just one person. There's no reason a female Doctor should signify that sort of change and no recent evidence to suggest the producers intend to go there.

Is this to say I expect - nay, demand, the show retain male priorities? I'll turn that one around and ask what makes my preferences necessarily, inherently masculine?

Possibly it’s the studio’s sexism that’s more dangerous than the fans’. What’s the BBC going to do with a female Doctor? Will she be permitted everything granted to the men? Will the BBC break down barriers, or just give in to sexist notions? Such as. . ? I’m not the one to ask. That’s a way deeper discussion than what we’ve got going here.

Possible it's the nature of the archetype: in pop culture and genre fiction, all the loners, outcasts, outlaws, and aimless wanderers tend to be men. Historically, women just aren't allowed to be that sort of thing. Is this the adjustment some folks just can't seem to make?

Let’s stop beating around the bush, let’s look this in the face: if the Doctor is indeed the personification of higher principal, the final word, the ultimate authority, the very pinnacle of wisdom. . . can we. . .can I. . .accept a woman in this role?

. . .

This isn’t about Doctor Who anymore, is it?

. . .

In which case, this an idea whose time has come, and there’s really no logical reason to get in its way.

I’m going to go at it from another angle. From the other end as it were. I think of the online Q&A with Matt Smith published in the Guardian not long ago. A parent asked if he had any advice for their young daughter, who wanted to be Doctor Who when she grew up. (“Talk fast” was his advice).  So here’s the question: am I going to be the one to look that little girl in they eye and tell her she can’t be the Doctor? Because she’s a girl?

How about that Year 5 kid I once had, who kept bringing me Doctor Who Lego figurines? Might she want to be the Doctor? Might she deserve the same role model I had when I was her age?

Would the Doctor hold her back?

(What would Sharina say?)[1]

If the Doctor’s taught me anything, it’s that we all matter. Each and every one of us. We are entitled to the same opportunities, the same paths to happiness and the same keys to wisdom. You will recall the “Rings of Akenaten”: The stars died so we could live. There’s not one of us who doesn’t contain the stuff of the universe. It’s time to let our petty differences go.

Here’s to Jodie Whittaker, and Doctor 13. I've got a feeling she’ll be alright.  

---

[1] There’s probably not more, and most likely less than, five people on earth who will get this reference. One day, there may be more.  

Do the Necronomicon! In which a bunch of geeks threaten the democratic process. . .

Hmmm. . .

It is fascinating the lengths some folks will to go in order to:

a) legitimize their prejudices

and

b) dignify their fantasies.

Writing for The Point magazine ("Final Fantasy:Neoractionary Politics and the Liberal Imagination") James Duesterberg  introduces us to the “neoreactionaries”, the pseudo intellectual branch of the alt-right who played a significant role in getting Donald Trump elected and poisoning the political discourse.. It’s an intriguing read – Duesterberg deserves a medal if he actually read all those tracts – but it what it all boils down to is this: the neoreactionaries are a bunch of nerds who’ve watched the Matrix too many times.

That’s it. These guys think they’re Neo. The world is the Matrix – or “Cathedral” as they call it - and they can rip it apart. There’s all kinds of bloated reasoning behind it – millions of words of it apparently – but that’s what it boils down to.  The world around us – specifically Liberal Democracy -is an illusion foisted on use by. . .Cthulhu apparently (I’m not joking), and we are brainwashed to accept it. Naturally they see “political correctness” as a kind of Newspeak designed to lull us into believing the illusion. Nothing new there. But it’s not just pc: they’ve no patience for democracy or freedom either. Basically any notion of civility gets their gander up. We’ve been brought up to believe these are good things, spoon-fed it from birth to keep us from envisioning anything else. Nothing to do with liberty or self determination, or even common decency – it’s all brainwashing. The Matrix has you.

I will say this much: it’s never wrong to ask questions. It’s never wrong to question your surroundings, or notions you were brought up with, or consider other possibilities. When I first read Nineteen Eighty Four as a teenager, the thing that disturbed me most was not that the people were enslaved, but that didn’t seem to realize it. They even enjoyed it. So the question burned within me: if I were enslaved, how would I know it? So it became very important to scrutinize everything any politician said or did, to question every social construct, no matter how deeply ingrained or self evident, and to basically take nothing for granted.

Despite all that, I never ended up as much of a radical. I basically came to the conclusion that the world wasn’t so bad; not perfect to be sure, but a damn sight better than what came before and most of what else has been proposed. You will notice in Duesterberg’s article that the neoreactionaries apparently cite the economic success of China to claim democracy is unnecessary (as if economic success were the only point of society). This isn’t Panglosiism; it’s just keeping things in perspective. The corollary of always asking questions is to learn to accept the answers supported by the best possible evidence. That’s why 9/11 truthers aren’t actually questioning anything – they’ve just switched one set of assumptions for another.

Nothing is as it seems

Which brings me back to the neoractionaries. They’re not questioning anything in any useful or constructive way – they’re removing barriers to their prejudices and rationalizing their assholery.  (They apparently argue slavery is natural as well.)

In his house at Ryleh, dead Cthulhu
invents liberal democracy

Is ironic or appropriate that these folks claiming reality isn’t reality exist entirely online? I mean, turn off your computers and go outside ffs! Also notice that aside from the occasional mention of Hume, their main influences are The Matrix and “Call of Cthulhu”, two fiercely middlebrow[1] works of fiction. While they’re lecturing us on the nature of reality, their lives have been defined by works of fantasy. They’re a lot more like LARPers than Revolutionaries – nerds trying to bring their fantasies to life.

(At least LARPers admit they’re only pretending).

It would be tempting to laugh off these losers. Trouble is, they believe their fantasy, and are acting on it. They’ve formed voting blocks based on it, and treat their fellow humans accordingly – like shit. They will not engage you in a civilized debate – for them, civility is just Cathedral propaganda, and you are an agent of Cthulhu. An enemy. Remember in the Matrix when Morpheus told Neo that the other citizens of the Matrix were “all enemies”? Basically giving him license to slaughter anyone he met? That’s how the neoreactionaries see you. Your criticisms of Trump? They know them: they love them. They think it’s all wonderful.

Those are the folks we’re dealing with. Your worst fears are exactly the kind of world they want.

---

[1] That’s not meant to be a snobbish dismissal. I love Lovecraft! But he sure as hell ain’t no basis for a political philosophy. 

Cautionary tale or racist necroporn? In which the author gets judgmental

So. . .

A comic book under the name Divided States of America decides to adorn one of their covers with a dead Pakistani man hanging from a noose with his balls cut off. Classy.

The publisher of the comic, Image, perhaps not surprisingly decided to withdraw the cover after the public outcry.  Also unsurprisingly, the creator of the comic, Howard Chaykin, was quite unrepentant, and tried to justify said cover:

"For the record, the cover depicts the horrific wish dream of some 45% of their fellow Americans. . .Perhaps if they spent a bit more time paying attention to the fact that the world they were born into is on the brink of serious disaster, they might have less time to get worked up about an image of genuine horror that depicts an aspect of that impeding disaster.” http://www.freaksugar.com/chaykin-responds/

Such self righteousness. You'd almost think he was depicting a real event, rather than making one up. . .

Consider me unconvinced. In fact colour me “Uughh!”, which I can’t help thinking is the reaction he wanted more than any cerebral reconsideration of American politics. There are any number of ways a comic could explore racism, Islamophobia or the horrors of mob rule without mutilating a brown man for benefit of the comic buying public, and good artists can inspire emotions in many different ways – reliance on pure shock value often signifies lack of gifts in other areas.

 The crudity of the drawing leads me to suspect it was more about selling comics than raising awareness; lacking either realism or artistry, and with all the subtlety of a Friday the 13^th film, it screams to me nothing so much as “blood and guts sold here!” I do not detect respect for the dead, or concern with human dignity; I’m not convinced this would be foremost in the minds of anyone drawn to picking it up. I do detect an appeal to base adolescent blood-lust rather than higher civic-mindedness.

Read this one instead

I could be wrong – judges of books and covers and all that – but I can’t help thinking how few truly effective social critics need exploitative imagery to make their points. I remember in particular how Joe Sacho managed to vividly portray all the horrors of the war in Bosnia (including gang rape) in Safe Area Gorazde without a drop of blood.  

Concern for society? Maybe. Concern for severed genitals? No question.

As said by comic blogger Beth Elderkin, such an image divorced from any context contributes nothing to the understanding of the issue. All it does is add more nastiness to the world. So there’s now a picture of a dead Muslim man on the shelf of your local comic shop: do you feel more enlightened? More aware? The picture itself says nothing – for all we know it could be the cover of a neo-nazi tract.

More than a few people would probably flip through it just to establish if it were such a tract – drawn by the irresistible wtf?!? factor. That’s the whole idea of covers: catch people’s attention. Get them to look at it. Maybe lay down a few clams for it. In other words, to sell it.

That is what we call “exploitation”. There are many in the comic book world who confuse it for gravitas. 

The publishers tried to justify it like this:

 Watering down in any way how bad things have become, seems like a cop out, like turning a blind eye at a time when we all need to be paying attention.           http://io9.gizmodo.com/image-comics-pulls-comic-book-cover-that-showed-violent-1796585827

 Possibly. And glorying in the gory details seems ghoulish, like turning a deaf ear to people genuinely affected by this sort of thing. I wonder how many Muslims Chaykin interviewed in preparation for this comic. How many mosques he visited in embattled Muslim communities. How many Pakistanis would be grateful for his efforts, and how many he bothered asking.  . .

 From what I can gather, the comic itself wasn't taken off shelves; no one tried to silence Chaykin's great cautionary tale. Read it if you must. But do yourself a favour and read Safe Area Gorazde as well. See how they compare. . .

Lord of timeLords: on Peter Capaldi

So finally I get to write about Doctor Who. Hurrah!

And because this is a very important thing to talk about, let's not beat about the bush, and get straight to the point (to borrow the cliche)

To whit: Peter Capaldi is leaving. Long live Capaldi!  Long live 12! (or is he 13?).  Capaldi Rocks. Capaldi rules. I love Capaldi and want to have his babies. Capaldi is the best thing to happen to the new series since the new series. Which alone guaranteed he would never last long. Just as Steve's Law dictates that any song he enjoys will always be switched off, any aspect of New Who he approves of will be rejected by the masses and tossed into the rubbish bin. And, God Forbid, if he actually Enjoys something, embraces it whole heartedly with child-like abandon not seen since childhood, then it will most definitely be widely despised. So, Peter Capaldi, and the first unobnoxious companion we've had in forever, Pearl Mackie's wonderful Bill, are both leaving.

Grumble grumble grumble, harrumph.

I knew I'd love 12 since his very first appearance. He didn't even have any lines - just a close up on his eyes at the end of the Fiftieth Anniversary special as a bit of a harbinger of things to come (or, "teaser" if you'd rather stick with industry terms). A rather brilliant little piece of temporal play if you ask me.  The eyes said it all; power, dignity, mystery. I could tell right away, this new Doctor would mean business.

To be sure, he got of to a rough start. His debut was just awful. He came across as rude, unintelligible, and despite the very worst Moffat excesses, the episode itself was a frightful bore. The rest of the season was a mess, they tried to find the right tone and strike the right balance, (anchored down the whole time by the wretched Mr. Pink story arch), but when he finally found his feet. . .

For the first time since the reboot began, I finally felt this was my show again. I was never sold on the cool Doctor, the suave and cute Doctor. The ladies man, party animal, inventor of the banana daiquiri - the hip and "with it" Doctor was never someone I could relate to. Even his choice of companions were cool kids. The Doctor I knew was the misfit's misfit, the eternal oddball and outsider.  Finally, we had a Doctor who fit the Bill (ha!). An aged professor of physics, a teacher, an actual scientist. Deeply caring but largely unsentimental, world-weary but never self-pitying, old and wise. These were adjectives I could never apply to Tenant or Smith. Maybe Eccleston if he'd stuck around - but he didn't. It wasn't until Capaldi really took off that I realized I much I missed these aspects of the Doctor's character. I didn't want a Doctor the cool kids would like, but a Doctor who was too busy to care what the cool-kids thought. I missed the unabashed intellectual who didn't give a damn about fashion.

Capaldi was all these things. The fact that they made him a physics professor was no accident: Capaldi didn't just take his companions out into the universe to show them a great time - he was trying to teach them something. To get them to think. If I've been alienated from the new series so much of the time it's because too often it just doesn't think. Sure, it could feel up a storm, but it so rarely thought about things, and didn't demand it of either its characters or its audience. Capaldi was a thinker. It was a joy to see him in action. A joy cut off, all too soon.

Who knows who they'll replace him with. Probably a woman - there's been every indication of it. Give the person a chance, has always been my motto. But haven't finally gotten used to this one, and fallen in love with him, it's saddening to have to give it up so early and start the disorienting process of a new Doctor all over again.

Loosing a Doctor is always a bittersweet experience - a forced goodbye, but a promising new hello as well. I suppose, like many things in life, I shouldn't mourn that he's leaving but rejoice that he was here, even for a short time. Fact is, I haven't been this broken up about a Doctor's departure since Logopolis. Maybe I should be grateful that I can still feel that way, that Doctor Who can still do that to me, and that they finally found someone who could make that happen.

Capaldi's leaving. Long live Capaldi.  







         

A Nationalist Screed. . .

Today is Canada Day - and not just any Canada Day, but the "sesquicentennial" (150 years). This means a lot of people will flock to the nearest downtown core decked out in red and white to scarf down copious quantities of cheap fast-food coffee and vaguely cheese flavoured buckets of bacon grease. The government will commission performances from the lamest possible local musical acts, (such as the disappointingly misnamed Barenaked Ladies) to promote its continuing vision of toe-bitingly boring national mediocrity.

It's lame, but largely harmless, even innocent, and in a world where nationalism usually means either going to war or ceaselessly persecuting ethnic or religious minorities, lame is not such a bad thing. If fascism is just nationalism by another name, then any nation that prides itself more on hitting rubber pucks with a stick than killing enemies on a battlefield, or selects a tree nibbling rodent as its national symbol, is perhaps worth celebrating. And, if on paper at least, it takes ethnic harmony and universal health care as not just points of pride but intrinsic to its identify, than it is definitely worth a party or two.

Not everyone will be celebrating of course. The Indigenous peoples can't pretend than any country founded on their destruction and subjugation is worth celebrating, and even a cursory awareness of the history makes it hard to disagree. By any standard, the residential school system was an atrocity. Who could approve of a project to take children from their parents, forbid them to speak their language, and hand them over to sex perverts?

That's what it amounted to. And it wasn't that long ago either, not some distant era of incomprehensibly different values. It was recent, within living memory. Victims and perpetrators are still alive to tell the tale. Nor was it an an anomaly, but official government policy - publicly elected officials called for it, taxpayer dollars paid for it and publicly paid bureaucrats carried it out. Nor just to one or two unfortunates, but thousands and thousands of people, an entire society.

Our country did this. Our country committed this act of evil.

There are lots of other examples too. While our boys were "over there" fighting Naziism, our government was conducting experiments on native people right here. Our government, our country, our beloved multicultural haven. The reserves are like third world countries, people are dying right left and centre, poverty and alcoholism and suicide is everywhere, there seems no end in sight. . .

So yeah, celebrations may be a little bittersweet this year. How does a society accept responsibility for evils done in its name? I don't know. I don't think anyone does. At the very least, we don't pretend it never happened.

But there are other stories to tell as well.

Perhaps all those Syrians dying to get in might one day have such a story. But I was thinking more specifically of my Polish grandparents who came fleeing Stalinism in the 40's, having lost everything to Hitlerism already. They opened up a small shop, never got rich, but did live peacefully ever after, and died knowing their children and grandchildren would never have to experience Hitlerism or Stalinism. That is not nothing, and that is worth celebrating. 

Perhaps it is a mark of maturity that a country could be confident and secure enough to celebrate itself without pretending it shits gold (are you listening Russia?)

(Let's look at the fireworks!) 











 

A letter to a professor from Delaware.

So an American student thought he'd see North Korea with own eyes, thought to take home a

souvenir, and ended up paying for it with his life. In his wildest dreams, poor Otto Warmbier never imagined taking home a stupid poster would be the death of him; he probably thought, like most of us, that getting yelled at and send away would be the worst that could happen to him. He underestimated the psychotic viciousness of the regime.  

The fact is, the Kim Il Sung death cult will waste no opportunity to violate human dignity. Warmbier was sentenced to fifteen years of hard labour, and released only after N.Korean hospitality put him on death's doorstep - he died less than a week after coming home. 

It was a particularly horrifying example of extreme culture shock, a naive, just about unconscious faith in the sanctity of human life confronted with an almost cartoonish indifference to it. Rarely have two sets of values been more incompatible, and rarely has right and wrong been less ambiguous. 

One would think so anyways. Some folks here in the decadent West side with the regime.

Kathryn Dettwyler, a professor anthropology from the University of Delaware, thought Otto "got what he deserved". 

I provide her words in their entirety (courtesy of the rancid Daily Mail) 

"

“Is it wrong of me to think that Otto Warmbier got exactly what he deserved? 

He went to North Korea for f*** sake, and then acted like a spoiled, naive, arrogant, US college student who never had to face the consequences of his actions. 

I see him crying at his sentencing hearing and think 'What did you expect?'

How about the moments of thought give to all the other people in North Korea who are suffering under the repressive government there? Just because they are north Koreans, and not US citizens, we shouldn't care about them?  

I've spent my life teaching folks just like Otto (I'm a 62 year old college professor of anthropology) and Otto is typical of the mindset of a lot of the young, white, rich, clueles (sic) males who come into my classes. 

These are the same kids who cry about their grades because they didn't think they'd really have to read and study the material to get a good grade. They simply deserve a good grade for being who they are. 

Or instead of crying, they bluster and threaten their female professors. His parents, ultimately, are to blame for his growing up thinking he could get away with whatever he wanted. 

Maybe in the US, where young, white, rich, clueless white males routinely get away with raping women. Not so much in North Korea. And of course, it's Otto's parents who will pay the price for the rest of their lives.”

Kathryn Dettwyler

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4636010/Professor-says-Otto-Warmbier-got-deserved.html#ixzz4l1yLASMr 
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Now, I provide my own response to Prof. Dettwyler:

(*ahem*)

Yes Professor, it is very wrong and you ought to feel ashamed of yourself.

It is very wrong to think that anybody rotting and dying in a dictator’s dungeon is “getting what they deserve”. I am astonished that anyone needs reminding of this. Apparently you do however, so I will repeat it: nobody deserves it. Nobody, whether American or Korean or whatever arbitrary distinction we happen to give them. No Human Being deserves it.

It should go without saying, but it clearly doesn’t. There’s a callousness throughout your post which makes it necessary to repeat. It does make me question your concern for the “other people in North Korea who are suffering” whom you so disingenuously invoke; if one person tortured to death for a petty crime is so unworthy of your sympathy, what makes anyone else? They failed to obey the laws of their land as well (namely, offending their thin-skinned god-king); by your logic surely they “got what they deserved” as well, no?

            No? Then what is the difference?

            Furthermore, how does concern for the one preclude concern for the other? Compassion is not finite; it does not need to be rationed (though yours apparently is).

            I suspect you don’t actually give a damn about the long suffering people of North Korea (your sympathy in this case clearly being for the regime), but use them to dignify your own prejudices. You heap adjectives on this young man – “spoiled, naive, arrogant, white, rich, clueles (sic)” – whom you’ve never met, and is no longer here to defend himself. From what I gather, he was never enrolled in any of your classes (being a student of the University of Virginia I understand, many miles from your office) and never cried to you for marks. He certainly never raped anyone. These are projections that have more to do with archetypes of your own invention that with Otto Warmbier.

            Perhaps you’ve replaced him with a composite of annoying students from your own experience. Perhaps you have had bad experiences, and perhaps you have a right to feel bitter. But I would caution against letting your bitterness overwhelm your basic decency. Remember, this was a person you had never met, and who had not actually done you any wrong. Are you really going to claim that justice was served? (In which case, what of the “all the other” people of North Korea serving similar sentences for similar “crimes”?). Does that kind of student (which Warmbier may or may not have been) really anger you more than the regime that killed him? Would you look his mother and father in the eye and say to their face what you wrote: not only did their son “get what he deserved”, but it was their fault?  

            Think carefully of your answer: it will reflect far more on you than on them.