Smerconish: "It almost seems like" VA Tech shooter "wasn't hooking up enough"

Discussing Cho Seung-Hui -- the 23-year-old student who killed 32 people and himself at Virginia Tech -- on the April 23 edition of Michael Smerconish's radio show, simulcast on MSNBC, Smerconish asserted, "It almost seems like, you know, this guy wasn't hooking up enough, and it allowed him to build up these frustrations that he might not otherwise have had."

Smerconish was interviewing Camille Paglia, professor of humanities and media studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, who was quoted in the April 22 edition of the Sunday Times of London as saying, "Young women now seem to want to behave like men and have sex without commitment. The signals they are giving are very confusing, and rage and humiliation build up in boys who are spurned again and again." Smerconish noted Paglia's comment before making his assertion that Cho "wasn't hooking up enough."

Paglia, who claimed to be from the "pro-sex wing of feminism, whose patron saint is Madonna," asserted that "this 'hooking up' culture that is going on on campus where these girls just have sort of casual, random sex with guys and never see them again" is, "over the long run, degrading to women." In response, Smerconish asserted, "[B]ut none of them were hooking up with him," and added that Cho "wasn't partaking in any of that." Paglia concurred, and added: "Also, our sex-permeated mass culture, popular culture makes it seem to a marginal and socially inept person like Cho as if everybody's getting it."

MSNBC is simulcasting Smerconish's show April 23-25, as Media Matters for America has noted.

From the April 23 edition of Smerconish Live:

SMERCONISH: You were quoted as saying, "Young women now seem to want to behave like men and have sex without commitment. The signals they are giving are very confusing, and rage and humiliation build up in boys who are spurned again and again."

It almost seems like, you know, this guy wasn't hooking up enough, and it allowed him to build up these frustrations that he might not otherwise have had.

PAGLIA: Well, I think this Cho was probably psychotic, and the signs of it were missed for a long time. But he seems to have been functional and to be able to get into college and so on. I'm of the pro-sex wing of feminism, whose patron saint is Madonna, all right, so I'm not coming from a conservative perspective here, but I do feel that this "hooking up" culture that's going on on campuses where girls just have sort of casual, random sex with guys and never see them again. I mean, I think that is kind of, over the long run, kind of degrading for women, OK? They're playing a male game, and I don't think they understand the psychological consequences.

SMERCONISH: Yeah, but none of them were hooking up with him. I mean, he wasn't partaking in any of that.

PAGLIA: No. Exactly. So you see all this going on around you. Not just in college, but in high school, it's going on. I mean, girls are servicing boys, and going either -- they're starting at age 10 and 11. And this is a kind of chaos that is going on right now in education. Also, our sex-permeated mass culture, popular culture makes it seem to a marginal and socially inept person like Cho as if everybody's getting it.

—R.C.