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Oh, maybe you have to be logged in to FB to see the text, here it is:
My friend Lenny Shaw posted this on his page a few minutes ago. He knew Eliott Rodger:
I am now ready to speak about what my status of yesterday was referring to and the personal tragedy that involved two extremely close friends of mine.
Starting point: I personally knew Elliot Rodger, the gunman of the Isla Vista massacre.
I knew him because he was a close friend of my two friends. I will NOT identify my two friends for reasons that may be obvious already, but that i will address.( As references to my two friends are unwieldy I will instead refer them as "Wesley" and "Kevin" , not their real names) Wesley and Kevin are two former students of mine ( In the interest of full accuracy, Wesley was my student, and Kevin is his best friend) As they are now adults, I have enjoyed a rewarding friendship with them both. Elliot was exactly their age and was a friend to them both as far back as childhood.
I will not tell every detail here, because it could easily lead to the compromising of the privacy and interests of Wesley and Kevin, and their welfare and well being is my chief concern. Any comments which even indirectly could lead to their identification will be quickly deleted.
Why say anything at all? Because people who follow my Facebook site know that I am a big event junkie, that I would be all over the place on the Eliot Rodger story anyway even if I had NO personal connection to it.
And at the risk of coming across as self-indulgent, I AM a writer, and the personal connection that I have with this story has generated the most surreal 24 hrs of my lifetime to date, and I feel compelled to share. But nothing is more important than the well-being of my friends Wesley and Kevin.
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I met Eliot Rodger in 2009. I may have seen him seven or eight times....ten at the most. He was in my former home in Santa Monica and he was once in my car. Until just two months ago, he was also my Facebook friend, until I blocked him for making very disturbing comments which, while not hinting of violence, were nevertheless quite extreme.
From the beginning he came across to me as shy and awkward. But quite soon, I did find him a little more disturbing than I was comfortable with. There was much more here than "awkward'.
I will quickly dispatch with what I heard him say over the occasions in which I conversed with him:
As has been depicted in the media, Elliot was in fact obsessed with the feeling that young women paid him little attention. At times, his personal views enlarged into his warped vision of a "perfect" society that he would desire, or even rule, in which women would be totally subservient to men. The 10 or 15 minutes in which I was alone with him, at a First Friday street event in Abbot Kinney in Venice in 2009, he quite clearly went on about his belief in the inferiority of women, and his intolerance of anyone who disagreed with him.
As a former teacher of adolescents, I had heard it all, but I increasingly felt that this was not just a case of the wild musings of youth. This kid had REAL issues.
In another context, some of his references would almost be comical. He modeled himself, on Emperor Palpatine in Star Wars. Not even Darth Vader, but Emperor Palpatine.
When Wesley and Kevin half jokingly suggested that Elliot just pay for sex and get it over with, Elliot answered that a hooker would not be acceptable. That any woman, even a hooker, would have to love him as well as go through the motions of sex
We guard against thinking that any of us may know a potential mass killer, but years ago I did comment to both Wesley and Kevin that of all the people that I ever met in my life, he came closest to fitting the profile
Although I still did not realistically fear violence, I became convinced that Elliot was not sane, and I told Wesley and Kevin that I did not want to spend any more time with him. The reason was simple: You cannot have a decent conversation with a madman. But, he was their old friend so I respected and supported their interest in him.
I did see Elliot in passing with the two of them ( again I had decided not to *hang* out with them when Elliot was around). The last time that I saw Elliot was last summer at the Pavilions Starbucks in Point Dume in Malibu. He and I exchanged brief pleasantries for just a couple of minutes and that was all.
Elliot was my Facebook friend until just March of this year. I unfriended and blocked him when he made a statement on my wall that "Teenagers who fornicate should get the death penalty" At that point, I was not even comfortable continuing even the minor status of his being one my FB friends
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Just a few words onthe speculations that I have heard in the media about Elliot Rodger:
Well-intenioned commentators have have referenced and if may be blunt- projected, cultural and political analysis of what this tortured young soul was all about. He was "Self-Entitiled", a "Whiner" , obviously "Misogynist", somewhat "Racist", an "Aspie"...on and on...... It is the hatred of women ....It is his access to guns... It is Wealthy Privileged Kids.... It is Video Games.... He was too "Horny".... He was too "Prudish"
No. Elliot Rodger was mentally ill. Profoundly so. That is, BY FAR, the takeaway that the world should have about this tragic man.
Sure he expressed that mental illness with extreme misogyny. But don't try to look into what made Elliot Rodger do what he did in the history of sexism. Find it in the history of mental illness. Of course his "views" on women were depraved and repulsive in the extreme. But they were not "views".... they were *ravings*. Ever since that first detailed conversation that I had with him that night on Abbot Kinney, I knew that there was simply NO point in trying to act as his teacher or mentor. What he needed was a DOCTOR.
And yes.... he creeped me out.
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Finally, just a few words on the bizarre experience of being so personally close to a major news story - and in particular how that is impacting Wesley and Kevin, my two young friends.
Since yesterday morning, both of these gentlemen's lives have been turned upside down. They have been getting phone calls, texts, tweets, Facebook messages, e-mail, and even personal visits to their home and workplace from media, large and small, from all over the world. How did the media find them?? Let's just make this simple: Welcome to the 21st Century.....
The Circus Century
They have been getting some hate e-mail, and hate tweets ( "Your friend was a psycho killer..') ... ( People looked at Elliot's FB....saw his friend list...BINGO...I would be getting the same thing had I not blocked him)
What is more surprising and amazing was the fact that total strangers, not filled with hate, but with just curiosity, have made friend requests of Wesley and Kevin, wanting to talk to then about Elliot. WTF?!
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To conclude, I do not plan to post any casual links on this news story, like I would on most other news stories, including this one had I not a personal connection. The personal dimension that I have with the Eliot Rodger story has forever blown away any possible other association that I could make with it.
Time permitting, I do plan to post pictures that I have of my Late Spring Altar .
And my regular Facebook scheduled programming, other than the Elliot Rodger story, will return no later than Tuesday
Please pray for the victims of this senseless tragedy. And for the recovery of the wounded. Body and soul
Peace...
