Gun control, mental illness, popular culture -- these are just a few of the factors that have been used by various pundits seeking to explain last week's Virginia Tech massacre.

The shortcomings of theoretical explanations for this nightmare extend even to those theorists whom I admire. Sarah Baxter in the Sunday Times of London quotes Camille Paglia on the Blacksburg killer:

Trapped in the perpetual adolescence of the student, he has become a new monstrous poster child for boys who would rather kill themselves and others than grow up.

Camille Paglia, professor of humanities and media studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and author of Sexual Personae, believes Cho is emblematic of the crisis of masculinity in America. "Women have difficulty understanding the mix of male sexual aggression with egotism and the ecstasy of self-immolation," she says. ...

Paglia, who has taught in American universities for 35 years, describes America's residential campuses as vast "islands of green and slack conformity where a strange benevolent and tyrannical paternalism has taken over. It's like a resort atmosphere."

Paglia believes the school Cho attended would have been no better equipped to deal with frustrated young males. "There is nothing happening educationally in these boring prisons that are fondly called suburban high schools. They are saturated with a false humanitarianism, which is especially damaging for boys.

"Young men have enormous energy. There was a time when they could run away, hop on a freighter, go to a factory and earn money, do something with their hands. Now there is this snobbery of the upper-middle-class professional. Everyone has to be a lawyer or paper pusher."

Cho is a classic example of "someone who felt he was a loser in the cruel social rat race," Paglia says. The pervasive hook-up culture at college, where girls are prepared to sleep with boys they barely know or fancy, can be a source of seething resentment and alienation for those who are left out.

"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."

The sex, Paglia argues, "is everywhere but it is not erotic," as can be seen by the sad spectacle of Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears flashing their lack of underwear during a night on the town. "It's not even titillating. It's banal and debasing."

Interesting, if not persuasive. It is possible to share Miss Paglia's view of modern public schools as "boring prisons" and her disdain for the "hook-up culture," without thinking these factors constitute a sufficient explanation for an act of insanity like the killing spree at Virginia Tech.

Social criticism cannot explain Cho's violence for the simple reason that such violence is so extremely rare. There are millions of American college students, and only one of them has ever committed such a horrific massacre. The factors cited by Miss Paglia affect all students; only one reacted as Cho did.

Long before the April 16 shootings, Cho's behavior was recognized as unusual by teachers, fellow students and family members. His grandfather told a Seoul newspaper that, even when Cho was a boy in Korea, he was so quiet there were concerns he might be mute.

Extremely rare events are difficult to explain by theoretical reference to general factors. What happened at Virginia Tech was a rare event, although sadly not rare enough.

-- Robert Stacy McCain, assistant national editor, The Washington Times