Anniversary

I see over at Lawyers, Guns and Money that we passed an interesting anniversary this week:

On Oprah Winfrey’s 25th birthday, 29 July 1979 {sic, should be January}, a 16-year-old girl named Brenda Ann Spencer shot eight children and three adults at Grover Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego. She fired the shots from her house -- located just across the street from the school -- with a rifle her father had gotten for her for Christmas. (She later claimed to have waned a radio instead and took the gift as a sign she should kill herself).

Remarkably, none of the children at Cleveland were killed, although the school's principal, Burton Wragg, and the custodian Mike Suchar died trying to protect the kids. Asked to explain her motive after the six-hour seige at her house came to an end, Spencer told police that she didn’t like Mondays. "This livened up the day," she added.

As I noted when this was mentioned to me by my esteemed other half, what struck me about the story is a little different, and says a lot about how Americans are perceived outside America. Bob Geldof tells us in his autobiography that they were touring to support Tonic for the Troops in January of 1979, and sitting in a radio station waiting to be interviewed when this came over the telex machine. He saw the story and her defense, and was inspired. But, according to the book, he never thought for a moment that anyone would know who it was about. He claims he just assumed that sort of thing happened all the time in America.



h/t Thers