The Other McCain

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VIDEO: Florida School Board Shooting

Posted on | December 14, 2010 | 29 Comments

Following up on our earlier report:

The man who is seen on the video trying to talk Clay Duke out of it is school superintendent Bill Husfelt:

Duke talked about how his wife had been fired by the school system. But Husfelt and the members of the board told Duke they did not remember his wife or why she had been fired. Board member Jerry Register promised to get her a job. Ultimately, Husfelt tried to bargain with Duke to let the other board members go, pointing out that he was the one who signed the termination papers.
“Let them go. I’m the one that did it,” Husfelt said. “I don’t want anybody to get hurt.” . . .
Duke raised his gun and pointed it at Husfelt.
“Please don’t,” Husfelt said. “Please don’t.”
Then Duke fired several shots directly at Husfelt. . . .
Deputy Chief Robert Colbert said Duke’s bullets struck the podium. Husfelt and the other board members dived for cover and Mike Jones fired at Duke, striking him several times in the torso. While Duke was on the ground, he grabbed his weapon and shot himself in the head, Colbert said. . . .

I’ve written up a just-the-facts-ma’am account at The American Spectator.

UPDATE: Here’s George Stephanopoulos telling the story on ABC News:

UPDATE II: The New York Times reports Duke “painting a mysterious red encircled ‘V’ on the wall,” but of course it’s not “myterious” at all. I’m not even a movie buff, but I immediately recognized this as referring to V for Vendetta, a 2006 film in which the protagonist uses terrorist tactics to fight an oppressive government.

I guarantee if Duke has displayed, say, a Gadsden Flag, the New York Times would not have found that “mysterious.”

UPDATE III: Checking SiteMeter just now, I’m getting a lot of Google search traffic based on the simplicity of the title, but I’ve also gotten at least one visitor who was searching for “Clay Duke connected to Tea Party.”

No evidence of that, of course — quite the opposite: On his Facebook page, Clay Duke linked a “progressive” Web site. But I’ll take the Google traffic. Hits is hits, I always say.

UPDATE IV:  WTSP-TV in Tampa:

Holly George says she and her mother have known Duke for about two years.
“My mom said he had borderline personalities,” George told 10 News Reporter Janie Porter early Wednesday morning.
“It always creeped me out when he asked me to shave my head like Natalie Portman.” . . .
Before the shooting, witnesses say Duke drew a red ‘V’ on the wall of the meeting chambers and then circled it.
It’s the same symbol used in the movie V for Vendetta.
George said that was Duke’s favorite movie.
“He’d watch it over and over again,” she said.

Linked by The Lonely Conservative and The Busted Nut.

UPDATE V: More background on Duke’s criminal past:

Ben Bollinger represented Duke when he was convicted in 1999 of shooting into a vehicle, aggravated stalking and wearing a bulletproof vest. Duke was sentenced to five years in prison on each count and his sentences were served concurrently. As part of a plea agreement, Duke was required to complete psychological counseling.
Bollinger said Tuesday that Duke was waiting in the woods for his wife with a rifle, wearing a mask and a bulletproof vest. She confronted him and then tried to leave in a vehicle, and Duke shot the tires of the vehicle.
“The guy was like, just out there,” Bollinger said. “He had some bad problems.”
In January 2009, Duke wrote a letter to Circuit Judge Dedee Costello, stating he had come before her in 1999 and 2000, “as a mentally ill man who had committed crimes. … While in prison I was diagnosed as ‘adult-onset bipolar condition’ and given proper therapy. With that therapy and good behavior, I was released from prison after serving 85 percent of my sentence.”
He went on to ask Costello to terminate his probation early.

Which is to say, Clay Duke was a violent criminal with a clear history of mental illness. The bipolar diagnosis was probably an error. The guy seemed to be suffering from a form of paranoia, which is a type of narcissistic personality disorder.

I’ve previously explained the etiology of paranoia and its origin in the narcissist’s search for scapegoats to explain his own failures. Duke’s identification with V for Vendetta and his self-pitying conception of himself as a martyred victim of the “wealthy” are entirely consonant with the narcissism-paranoia complex.

As with other similar criminals, Duke lost himself in fantasies of achieving significance through violence. In the same way that Columbine killers Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris sought inspiration in The Basketball Diaries (which has a fantasy sequence of trenchcoat-clad Leonardo Di Caprio slaughtering his classmates), Duke was inspired by the terrorist hero of V for Vendetta.

This is not to blame filmmakers for the acts of criminals. Rather, it is to say that paranoid personalities are drawn toward popular entertainment that features heroic (or at least, sympathetic) characters who dramatically act out the revenge fantasies that brew in the imagination of the frustrated narcissist.

The fundamental conflict of the narcissist is between his own inflated self-concept and the reality of his insignificance. The narcissist compensates for this feedback mismatch through fantasy, imagining himself to be a person of tremendous power and historical (or even cosmic) significance, so that those who ignore or demean him are engaged in unjust persecution.

A similar tendency (which psychologists call grandiosity) is present in the manic phase of bipolar disorder, but is distinct from delusional grandiosity of the paranoid type. The key feature of paranoia is a sense of persecution, which results from the ego that the narcissistic personality has over-inflated — “I am so important, so special, that other people are out to get me” — in an attempt to reduce cognitive dissonance by rationalizing failure. The threatening “them,” those shadowy others who supposedly conspire against the paranoid, are in fact imagined scapegoats whose psychological purpose is to explain the paranoid’s own problems.

Seeking inspiration in works of fiction is common to paranoid criminals like Clay Duke. Recall that John Lennon’s assassin, Mark David Chapman, was inspired by The Catcher in the Rye, while the would-be assassin of Ronald Reagan, John Hinckley, was inspired by Taxi Driver.

The manifestation of Duke’s paranoia was different than Hinckley or Chapman. Duke didn’t try to assassinate someone famous, but engaged in a crime that he knew would be recorded on video, providing him with a guaranteed audience for his final gesture, his desperate attempt to achieve the significance he craved.

Duke was acting out his fantasy. He expressed his grandiosity by painting the V for Vendetta symbol on the wall, and then proceeded to lecture the school board about the wrongs they had (allegedly) done to him. And you will notice that it was after the superintendent described what Duke was actually doing – a suicide-by-cop stunt — that Duke leveled his pistol and opened fire.

Nothing enrages a narcissist worse than being exposed for what he actually is. Calling attention to his self-pitying nature — pointing out that his scapegoats are not to blame for his failures — aggravates the cognitive dissonance that is the root of the narcissistic paranoid’s problem.

UPDATE VI: At long last a Memeorandum thread, with commentary by Donald Douglas of American Power among others. No Instalanche yet, which goes to show that Professor Glenn Reynolds is out to get me!


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Category: Crime, Florida

Comments

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  • Maximuswow

    crazy ass…too bad they didn’t get a chance to hang this jerk before he shot himself

  • Frank

    better that way, saved the tax payers a lot of money…

  • Anonymous

    So what is the story, did he shoot himself or was it death by cop (in this case death by packin school board member). The earlier report said it was a cap gun. Seems like it would have been hard to miss on that first shot.

    And was it a “security guard” or a packin school board member who shot him?

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  • richard

    That is what is wrong with our country. They just sit there and wait to be shot. People we need to FIGHT in this situation dont sit and wait to be killed.

  • CurlySaysGo

    You’ve obviously not been held at gunpoint before. Would you really risk your life and the lives around you just to prove that your tough?

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_HWCSNSTCE5NC6PSQ52QQT5O6D4 svg1234

    Wasn’t a cap gun. At one point in the video, you can see a shot fired low that ricochets off the floor.

  • http://waxingerratic.wordpress.com/ ECM

    I’m not sure this makes sense: if the dude is going to shoot you, it’s kinda important that you don’t sit there and has **** all to do w/ proving how tough you are. (I know: how do you know he’s going to shoot? Well, you don’t, but at least trying to take down the would-be assailant is, again, better than waiting for him to execute you like a drugged calf.)

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_HWCSNSTCE5NC6PSQ52QQT5O6D4 svg1234

    Bill Husfelt has a gun pointed directly at him at point blank range – and says “please don’t” twice rather than ducking behind the podium BEFORE the perp fires? Why??? I truly admire his courage in saying “let them go – it was my fault”, but he is very lucky to be alive.

  • Sapwolf

    Interesting his shot apparently went low.

    Obviously not trained. Probably yanked on the trigger pulling it down which put the bullet in the table, etc.

    If Mike Jones hit him more than once in the torso, then he needs to up his caliber unless the hits were below ribcage.

    By the way, why did Jones wait to shoot him? Was he concerned Duke would swing the gun to him if he noticed his hand move for his own gun? Or, did he think he could have talked out of it and give up the gun? I’m thinking the later.

  • Sapwolf

    On further review of the video, you can actually see the gun dip slightly and then the papers get ruffled from the shot.

    Yep, he pulled the barrel down slightly by bad trigger control.

    Good think he probably didn’t ‘dry practice’, otherwise that guy would be hit and maybe dead.

    I’ve caught myself sometimes pulling that first shot down slightly at the range, although it rarely happens on my second shot because I’m pretty good at holding the trigger break to avoid slack and because I like the low slack of my Kimber.

    Most bullets in a gun fight don’t hit and most gunfights are in the 3 to 8 meter range.

    Glad the good guys one this.

    However, if every fired or laid off unionized teacher or their spouse resort to this behavior, being a fiscal conservative sure has a new unanticipated angle.

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  • Anonymous

    So a Leftard gets a gun and goes on a shooting spree? Typical

    They want to ban guns because they know that they lack the self-control to own them, and they think the rest of humanity is also so afflicted.

    All Lefty politics is driven by the projection of their own personal failings.

  • Bryanwhitehvac

    if any of the BOARD members had a firearm that guy would have never made it that far!

    NRA member/pro-gun choice advocate

  • Ggordon

    Lady with the purse should have had a gun instead.
    Game over.

  • http://pointofagun.blogspot.com/ Dave C

    The bipolar diagnosis was probably an error. The guy seemed to be suffering from a form of paranoia, which is a type of narcissistic personality disorder.

    But what does Barret Brown have to do with this?

  • Figuwal77

    It’s sad and yet so typical of right-wingers in your country to attack the obvious victims of your system. These same people coldly blaim blacks for not getting out of the ghetto or becoming rich while conveniently ignoring the fact that thru decades of housing segregation, the racist war on drugs that constantly focuses on ghettos and not frat houses where cocaine and marihuana are just as common, job discrimination and other evils of the so-called “land of the free” a significant segment of your population has been marginalized. The article was nothing short of a diatribe against anyone who is facing tough times during this financial crisis and obviously comes from a member of the confortable class who, from his ivory tower in the corporate world, instinctively judges and condemns those who were not privileged enough to rise above the majority that he probably perceives as the rabble. Of course, what that man did was wrong, but what the hell do you expect when your unjust economic system has left his, and millions of other families, poor while the bankers who caused it were bailed out? The truth is that ANYONE facing the loss of his or her home and economic stability is capable of doing the unthinkable, from drug use to suicide, and just because you don’t care to see it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It’s time to start looking at the dispossesed and the marginalized (I suggest that you start by visiting the inner cities or barrios) so that we may become more humane and decent. More importantly, so that we may address the ROOT CAUSE (like lack of effective health care in this example) of our problems as opposed to simply blaming the “others” (blacks, hispanics, the poor, the depressed,etc.).

    It’s interesting to see how many of your readers were limiting their “solution” to killing (That’s new. Througout history violence has been the preferred method of dealing with dissent or the problematic. Probably because it doesn’t involve much thinking or spending that may inconvenience the powerful.) without the slightest consideration as to how to PREVENT future social problems. I’m a gun owner and a death penalty supporter, but I do not believe for a second that violence against the marginalized is the best way to improve society. I believe more social involvement by your huge government would go a very long way towards solving those problems and if your reply is that government is too big and costly already my answer to you is that, although true, it is bloated in the military arena and that’s the area you should reduce, significantly. Indeed, after reading the comments above I don’t know which scares me more, the gun totting Clay Dukes of the world or the gun totting nuts (who I can’t help but to imagine as members of a lynch mob “solving” a black problem had they been born in the Jim Crow era) that answered your article.

  • Anonymous

    Too long, did not read.

    Seriously, learn to condense what you are pleased to call your thoughts, or get your own damned blog.

    Who the hell do you think you are, anyway?

  • http://pointofagun.blogspot.com/ Dave C

    That read like Charlie Brown’s teacher talking..

    “wha wha whaa..”

    “What’s that, ma’am?”

    “whom wha whaa whom whaa”

    “Oh, no ma’am”

  • http://pointofagun.blogspot.com/ Dave C

    That read like Charlie Brown’s teacher talking..

    “wha wha whaa..”

    “What’s that, ma’am?”

    “whom wha whaa whom whaa”

    “Oh, no ma’am”

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  • Anonymous

    You managed to slog through that drivel?

    You’re a better man than I.

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  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1430411190 Joey Myers

    Hey guy. Your whole rant pivots around “…gun totting nuts (who I can’t help but to imagine as members of a lynch mob “solving” a black problem had they been born in the Jim Crow era) ..” Hate to inform you, but the Jim Crowe folk were all ……..LIBERALS. Get a clue.

  • Anonymous

    If he had a clue, he wouldn’t be a Lefty.

  • Dr. Williamson

    Oh, for goodness’ sake. Paranoia is not a
    type of personality disorder.

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