This is why I don't watch the news, ever. I dno't need or want to know about every horrible thing that happens in the entire world. And the sensationalizing of everything makes me sick.

Yahoo had an article about sand holes collapsing and killing kids. The reporter called in "not uncommon". It's happened 17 times in 20 years in the US. Tens of millions of kids have gone to a beach in those 2 decades. 12 times is as far from "not uncommon" as it's possible to get in this universe. All reporters are hacks and should be put out to pasture. Or shot, whatever.

Every mass shooting that gets reported spawns more of them. We should jail the new wire for the deaths they cause.

Odd, the descriptions of the suspect I've read have him dressed in black tactical gear from head to toe and a gas mask. The Joker traditionally wears a purple suit with an orange vest and green shirt, along with green hair, dead white skin, and very red lips. The other bit with the Joker claim was that he'd painted his hair red, again, not like the Joker.

From what I can tell, one anonymous source is claiming the suspect referred to himself as the Joker. But there doesn't seem to be any confirmation of that. And he certainly wasn't dressed anything like the Joker.

BatPsycho got his idea from the 2009 movie "Rampage" which was directed by the German director Uwe Boll. The movie is on youtube in full length. Watch it and you'll see.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1337057/

About 150 people in the US die each day from traffic accidents, and another 750 are seriously injured. Life involves risk.

This shooting is of course horrible. How can we decrease the risks of walking around and attending movies? The counter intuitive response is to encourage people to be armed.

The Colorado Shooter didn't want to die. He surrendered peacefully to the police. He would not have rampaged if he thought there would be armed resistance.

Even if he accepted death, armed citizens would have stopped him before he could accomplish his worst.

Guns exist. The Shooter acquired his guns legally, but criminal and deranged people can always get guns. Given that, I am more safe if I and other ordinary people also have guns. That is the best way to reduce this already small risk.

I am an editor, and if my publication was covering this story, it would be the "Movie Theater Shooting" in the headlines for a number of reasons ... including the fact that it hasn't been established (as far as I've been following it) that the alleged shooter was wearing the makeup of a movie character.

That's just basic checking of the facts, something that seemed to elude both ABC News and Breitbart today. I don't know what Breitbart's standards for due diligence might be - they seem pretty low to me - but ABC should fire Brian Ross and let him go to work at a website where frenzied, off-the-cuff, "I saw it on Google" speculation is all the proof you need to report something as fact.

"I'd do what I could to not help him glorify what he did in any way."

Amen! Or Amy-en! I hate it when police or journalists give glamorous or dramatic names to psycho freaks who commit horrific acts of cowardice.

> ABC should fire Brian Ross

See Kaus, and this book published a quarter-century ago. Ross has always been shabby.

At some point, we have to concede that the problem isn't that Ross has a job, the problem is that people watch TV news.

Also—

Consider this tweet, which may have been partially satiric...

Mark Steyn once said that one of his secret powers is to put a remarkable fact into each column. So even if his readers aren't persuaded, they'll have learned something to make them grateful they gave him the time.

Really, I don't need to see this guy's face in my paper, or on the news.
Much like these other 'celebrities' (Kardashians?) who are constantly making 'news' by getting beat up or knocked up or whatever.

Also, "glorifying him" is not something we need to worry about: Third-grade psychout techniques don't defeat violent lunacy of this scale.

Were you to talk to this guy with sufficient patience (and I hope no one ever does), he'd probably say that disrespect from other children was what set him on this path, as if even then his behavior couldn't be properly judged by those around him.

Annnnnd...

I'm just not sure we're going to stop people from calling this something like the 'Batman murders', or that it's even worth worrying about. The economic vitality of a comic book franchise ought to carry its own weight. I see no reason to be precious about it in my language or yours.

As public opinion about this crisis gels, we have better things to be concerned with. Fundamental American values were stripped and twisted from us after 9/11. The Tuscon shootings nearly spazzed out of the rational realm as well.

This is why Twitter was so golden yesterday. The ferocity and concision of that rhetoric, coherent or not, was a wonderful explication of shared & private values. For a big crisis, everybody's watching their own special point of interest, and someone is going to describe a consideration that you've ignored, or would prefer to ignore.

...And Dear God, isn't that better than having the whole of America trying to figure it out through the mumbling idiocies of three white-guy 'anchormen' on television?

That's how it worked when I was child.

It sucked. It sucked garden hose, and it chipped your teeth.

(That's the milieu that gave us Brian Ross.)

Walter Cronkite, David Brinkley, Chet Huntley, Harry Reasoner, Howard K. Smith...Mumbling idiocies?? I don't think so.

That was back when the news was about the news, not an 'entertainment product' like today's "news" is.
We didn't have to 'figure it out' because we were (mostly) given the facts, and opinions were clearly identified as editorial comment.

> We didn't have to 'figure it out' because
> we were (mostly) given the facts, and opinions
> were clearly identified as editorial comment.

There will never be a weaker appreciation of the media landscape in those years.

> We didn't have to 'figure it out' because we
> were (mostly) given the facts

I'm going to remember that you feel this way. About that.

You didn't have to "'figure it out'."