First, yes, enough has been said about the shooter at Virginia Tech. The lost need our attention -- their friends and families, their hopes and losses.

Enough, and still, there is my need to say one final thing.

There was been much hand-wringing and expression of regret and disgust over NBC's decision to air a portion of the video images sent to them by Virginia Tech mass killer, Cho Seung-hui.

He called it his "manifesto." It was beyond disturbing; it was evil personified.

It was also, if we are honest, all too familiar.

As a mother, whose life after the death of my child would be dirt and ash, I understand with all my being the disbelief and agony of the families, the brothers and sisters, the mothers and fathers, the aunts, grandchildren, grandparents and sweethearts, who saw it.

And so, part of me cries out "Foul!"A part of me says that it was wrong to show America the hateful, self-pitying ramblings of a young man's last look into hell -- before he blew away so many dreams.

But as a mother, also, I support NBC's choice, perhaps not quite for the reasons the network would wish.

I have been the mother of one boy whose childhood wounds left him friendless and angry -- although never violent.

I have been the mother of a boy whose learning problems left him scorned and avoided -- although his basic sanity and sweet soul, along with his family's love, rescued him.

They were angry boys. They were hurt and tormented boys. Some of this was of their own making. Some of it was not. Because neither had a predisposition for violent acting out, because they let us seek active solutions, they expressed their pain only in words and poems. They grew up. They found peace.

But what is the response in a child who is predisposed to act out bizarrely -- who is predisposed to mental illness? In 'Now You See Her,' my most recent book, I wrote about a girl obsessed with celebrity, driven by her own longings to an incomprehensible, although victimless, crime. This was a tiny example of what unbearable interior pressure can force an impulsive mind to do.

Although Cho Seung-hui's hardened face and spiteful words are terrifying to watch, would they have been so terrifying had they been part of a music video? Or a film? Or a Showtime series, such as 'Dexter,' a yarn about a sociopathic Robin Hood who exercises his inescapable urge to kill by killing serial killers?

Are they so ghastly because they are linked to something real? Haven't all of us seen worse in the films and television shows we love?

I think we have.

I think that had it not been real, it would have been called 'edgy,' 'dark,' insightful.'

Like Phil LaMarche's book about a boy whose friend shoots his own younger brother while they are examining a rife -- a tragedy that wins the gun owner the adulation of a group of high school vigilantes -- we would have accepted it as an insight into our collective soul.

"Monster!" one public radio host cried. "Compassionate Americans were subjected to to the rantings of a monster!"

Cry monster. Go ahead.

But then admit that we are the doctors Frankenstein who made this monster.

Yes, there were many failed attempts to help or stop Cho Seung-hui, when he was a boy and when he was a man. Many were chilled by his obsessive writings and his icy demeanor. Many were frightened. But either they drew back or ran into roadblocks that prevented by those who couldn't -- or didn't -- take this mortal threat seriously. Among the first things Cho Seung-hui said was, "You had a hundred billion chances to have avoided today."

Are we responsible for every nut with a gun who snaps? We are if he's intent on killing our kids.

Does uniting in our disapproval of NBC News absolve us of that? If we do not have to face the sight of Cho Seung-hui, or hear him speak, is it easier to believe that he was one of a kind?

Is it easier to believe that none of us knows anyone like him?

Or are we afraid to look at him because he is our own?

We all know someone as angry as this sick young man -- someone who may never harm a soul, but will live forever in torment, hating the world. We all know that he could have gone amok if raised if raised in a Quaker village, never exposed to the media feast of gore that surrounds us. We all know that being bombarded with these images blunts our children's normal response to violence, almost from the moment they learn to talk.

We are a two-headed, two-hearted society. We are the most tender and giving of people.

But we also are a society soaked in violence. We exalt and worship violence. We don't consider it an unfortunate part of human nature. That's just rhetoric.

"Action" movies are not about action. They are about violence, just as "cowboy" movies were not about herding cows. They were about gunfights and genocide.

We cheer for those who create our violent entertainments. We make them rich.

We don't just need our guns. We love them. In Japan, a country with a samurai history, a nation of warriors, a country of nearly 130 million people, the number of gun deaths among young people last year... was zero.

So, as we mourn the death of the victims and heroes at Virginia Tech, let's not be hypocrites as we do. The bell tolls not just for those who loved and laughed and learned and died there.

It tolls for us.

Jacquelyn Mitchard