The author of the viral blog post "I Am Adam Lanza's Mother" has given an exclusive interview to NBC News, appearing on the Today show Monday morning -- three days after the horrific Connecticut elementary school shootings that prompted her to write about mental illness and her fears concerning her 13-year-old son.
The post, originally published on the blog The Anarchist Soccer Mom and later syndicated on Gawker, has amassed more than 2.6 million views on the latter website. In her essay on Friday, the day Adam Lanza walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., and killed 20 children, Liza Long revealed she is "terrified" of her son, "Michael," whose name has been changed. A few weeks before, she wrote, he pulled a knife when asked to return overdue library books -- threatening to kill her and himself while his younger siblings locked themselves in a car -- resulting in police officers and a paramedic strapping Michael into a gurney and shuttling him to the ER.
"I live with a son who is mentally ill. I love my son. But he terrifies me," Long confessed, writing: "I am sharing this story because I am Adam Lanza’s mother. I am Dylan Klebold’s and Eric Harris’s mother. I am James Holmes’s mother. I am Jared Loughner’s mother. I am Seung-Hui Cho’s mother. And these boys—and their mothers—need help. In the wake of another horrific national tragedy, it’s easy to talk about guns. But it’s time to talk about mental illness."
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While Long has been commended for honesty, and certainly touched a national nerve on a subject long glossed over by stigma, there has been some backlash against the Idaho-based mother of four.
On her personal blog Sunday, writer Sarah Kendzior countered the public kudos for Long with an equally-viral post detailing Long's allegedly "vindictive and cruel posts about her children in which she fantasizes about beating them, locking them up and giving them away. In most posts, her allegedly insane and violent son is portrayed as a normal boy who incites her wrath by being messy, buying too many Apple products and supporting Obama."
Kendzior continued: "These children could be in real danger if her goal was to capitalize on the Newtown tragedy by creating a media campaign designed to give her sympathy. If I am wrong about this, I truly apologize. But there is a 13-year-old boy who has already had his reputation destroyed and who may be facing serious harm."
Facing backlash of her own against Long supporters, Kendzior has followed up with a memo clarifying that she she wrote what she did because she's a parent and "A child does not deserve to have his mother embark on a media tour promoting him as a future mass murderer."
For Long's Today appearance, the NBC program did not identify Long or her son by name.
"We have had a variety of diagnoses," she told the camera, apparently being interviewed by an unseen producer rather than an on-air reporter. "And the latest is attention-deficit hyper-activity disorder -- ADHD. He's also been diagnosed with something called intermittent explosive disorder and oppositional defiant disorder."
She said she first learned about Friday's shooting on her Facebook feed at work. "I closed the door to my office and started to shiver. Every time I hear about a mass shooting, I think about my son. And I wonder if some day I'll be that mom," she worried.
Savannah Guthrie, reporting from the field in Newtown, stressed that Today had reached out to Long's ex-husband, who relayed that not everybody with his son's condition ends up a violent criminal.
This video excerpting Long's interview, teased Sunday on the Nightly News, shows her announcing her name.
Twitter: @ErinLCarlson
Email: erin.carlson@thr.com
