Markets in Everything -- VT

Carpetbagger has a good post up on how the American Family Association is using the VT shootings as a marketing opportunity. I’ve done my best to keep out of the snark game on VT, actuated by some residual shred of human decency and also figuring that most of what I say would have been said a thousand times elsewhere anyway. But let me offer one wrinkle I haven’t noticed elsewhere. That is: AFA and the chorus are treating all this as a visitation of God’s justice on Godlessness. I don’t know much of anything about VT except that (a) it sounded (and still sounds) like a pretty nice place; (b) it’s a Virginia state school; and (c) it is tucked back in the Appalachians.

Now, what are the chances that VT is a center of Godlessness? Okay, granted it is not Pat Robertson U. But Area Connect lists 48 churches—all apparently Christian, if you count Mormon. I don’t know quite what to compare with but it seems like a pretty impressive layout for a town of 39,573 (link). I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find that VT students rank high on almost any index of church participation (apparently the shooter himself had some sort of church tie, but I suspect we don’t know enough about that to press it very far). That is, if God has any kind of campus visitation schedule, I wouldn't be surprised to find that VT has long been high on his regular route. Seems to me that a really ticked-off God would have found more to suit his impulse for vengeance here.