Copycat Killer
Most of the papers lead with local election results. USA Today leads with a
national election round-up: Slugged "Republicans Take Virginia," the story says
that the GOP won control of the Virginia legislature for the first time ever
(the Washington
Post says the first time in a century) and is close to winning the
Philadelphia mayor's office for the first time in 50 years (Associated Press
dispatches this morning show the Democrat won). But Democrats won
the mayoralty in GOP-heavy Indianapolis and Columbus, Ohio. Maine voters
legalized limited marijuana use and Washington state voters slashed car taxes.
The New York
Times ' top nonlocal lead is the massacre of seven Xerox employees by a co-worker in Honolulu, a
story off-leaded by the Los Angeles Times and USAT and fronted by the Post . The LAT leads with a widening Justice Department probe into bribery in the
Latin music business. The anonymously sourced story says that the DOJ will soon
prosecute officials at 80 Spanish radio stations in New York, Washington, and
Los Angeles for taking payola from the large independent label Fonovisa.
USAT says the copier repairman, Byran Uyesuji, 40, had just been
laid off. He shot seven colleagues, all of whom died immediately, with 20 shots
from a 9-millimeter pistol. He drove a company van to a nature preserve and
gave himself up after several hours of negotiations. Most of the papers note
that Uyesuji has at least 17 weapons registered in his name (a similar number
were found in his home) and was a member of his high-school shooting team. The
LAT and Post note that according to the Honolulu Star-Bulletin ,
Uyesuji had a gun permit turned down in 1994 after an arrest for property
damage at work.
The LAT has the best detail on the shooting: Uyesuji is a "chunky figure" who wore
a blue-and-white Hawaiian shirt. A high-school classmate says he was "quiet and
not part of the in-crowd." Uyesuji's father tells the LAT , "I'm going
to bring him another gun so he can shoot himself," and recalls that his son
received anger-management counseling after kicking an elevator door several
years ago. The LAT notes that Hawaii has strict gun laws, requiring a
safety course, waiting period, and background check to get a permit. All the
papers note that there were only 17 murders last year in Honolulu, a city of
800,000 people. The Post puts this in perspective: In Washington,
D.C., there were 260 homicides among 543,000 residents. The NYT
notes that Uyesuji's workplace shooting is one of the 10
deadliest in the nation's history. (To read Chatterbox's take on quiet,
reclusive neighbors who snap, click here.)
The Post fronts a new radar analysis of EgyptAir Flight 990's last
moments. The plane fell 4 miles a minute for about 40 seconds and then turned
to the right before hitting the water, suggesting that the plane began to break
up in the air. The straight initial drop also indicates that the problem was
likely not with the engines' thrust reversers, which would have caused the
plane to spin had they fired accidentally. The National Transportation Safety
Board also reported that one of the thrust reversers had been deactivated on
the EgyptAir jet, a normal procedure that made their uncontrolled ignition less
likely. The Wall Street
Journal says that, in its final report on a 1997 Korean Airlines crash in
Guam (released yesterday), the NTSB lambasted the Federal Aviation
Administration for not regulating foreign airlines enough. The NYT
fronts a story detailing the improvements in victim
consolation and in crash investigation since the TWA Flight 800 disaster. (To
read Michael Kinsley on our irrational fear of flying, click here.)
The NYT reports that Secretary of State Madeleine Albright will announce
today a policy change on Serbia: The U.S. will end sanctions if the country
holds free elections. Previously, the U.S. had required the removal of Serbian
dictator Slobodan Milosevic to end sanctions. But a "senior official" undercuts
the sincerity of the new U.S. position when he tells the Times , "We
cannot imagine, based on our analysis, that a genuinely free and fair election
would allow Milosevic to remain as president."
On the LAT opinion page, Brookings Fellow Shibley Telhami presses the White House to announce a Clinton Doctrine asserting
that the U.S. has "vital strategic" interests in Middle East peace. The U.S.
has always maintained its "interest" in Israeli peace, but the "vital
strategic" moniker signals to the American public that we are prepared to go to
war over that interest, if necessary. With current peace negotiations requiring
an American economic commitment as early as February, the Clinton
administration needs to begin building support at home by redefining our
participation in the process as something more than charity.
The Post editors weigh in on Time 's revelation that Al Gore had
been paying feminist celebrity Naomi Wolf $15,000 a month to advise him how to
be an "alpha male." "If Mr. Gore were more confident about his purpose in
running for president, he would not need magical elixirs," the editors write.
"The fact that his campaign sought to conceal payments to Ms. Wolf suggests
that the candidate knows this well." On the NYT op-ed page, Maureen
Dowd seconds this opinion--albeit in her inimitably waggish way.
"You've got to respect a woman who gets a vice president to pay her a salary
higher than his own," she writes. "Of course, when a man has to pony up a
fortune to a woman to teach him how to be a man, that definitely takes the edge
off his top-dogginess." But the top-dog prize goes to alpha satirist
Christopher Buckley, who recalls moments from his own Naomi-therapy (in the
Journal ):
"By the way [Wolf tells Buckley], that tie you're wearing, it's all wrong."
"It's an Hermès tie, you ignorant shrew. It cost me almost as much as your
monthly retainer."
"Your anger is very alpha. But an orange tie with teensy golf clubs is
totally beta. In fact, it's gamma. Lose it. And by the way, no more golf."
(For Chatterbox's take on Gore's beta problem, click here.)
