What will inevitably add insult to the injury done by the mass murderer in Virginia yesterday morning is the media feeding frenzy that's bound to ensue. In these ever more frequent cases where the perpetrator has offed himself in the end and there's therefore no chance of trying him, no nominal satisfaction in the eventuality of "justice being served," something about the coverage seems especially pornographic.

Everyone will have something to say about it (and I'm not about to be left out of the loop)—indeed, it's one of those tragedies we should talk about, we need to talk about, but the media's pursuit of the story is inherently cynical. It's rabid voyeurism, via satellite, in the guise of inquiring and informing. Every artifact from the incident gets its own story. Already, look at all the angles they're working over at The Globe:



This is the formula.

You can almost hear the editor barking: "OK, Kamisky—get me a list of deadly campus shootings! And you, Smitty, get on the horn with graphics and get one of those interactive maps of the rampage! Do we have scenes from the school? Preferably something bloody. If not, just screaming kids running from the scene will do, I guess. And, where's my girl friday? OK, sweety, get with the IT guys and start a discussion board on...comfort food? No, um, let's see...college safety!"

What this does in a weird way is normalizes the event for us. If there is a procedure we follow every time this happens it sort of becomes a ritual for us, doesn't it?

The Bush administration's auto-response team was on it. "Shocked and saddened," sure. But shocked and saddened is not what we have a government for. We can be shocked and saddened without one, frankly. When asked about the ramifications, a spokesman said: "The president believes that there is a right for people to bear arms, but that all laws must be followed. Certainly, bringing a gun into a school dormitory and shooting ... is against the law and something someone should be held accountable for." Oh, OK.

We remain in thrall to the gun nuts, whose vision of our country is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The only approach they offer? More security, more metal detectors, more guns. Which, as we have seen, leads to more massacres, more calls for more security, and metal detectors, and guns. Followed by more massacres. Followed by cries for more security, more metal detectors, more guns, and then more massacres. Are you seeing, um, a pattern?

And the media touches on it, but massacres and their emotional aftermath are more compelling than congressional hearings and the introduction of legislation, and the hard work of changing a culture of guns, death and nihilism, and we'd rather read sentimental stories and see sentimental pictures, like this:


Self-indulgently "share your thoughts." As of 7 a.m. the morning after, there were over 16,000 thoughts on the massacre on MSN's site. Most to the tune of "My heart goes out to the families," many with emoticons like: and . Lest we miss the true profundity of the sentiments.

Others offer more trenchant commentary, like "Spare the rod, spoil the child. And this is what 'time-outs' have left us with. Bring back the spanking!" and "should people be given psychological testing before allowing them to enroll in college courses?"

One informs us: "I'll have a reaction after we find out all the facts, everything and ever source is not clear yet." OK, we'll await your press conference on the matter.

Whatever the real healing that needs to happen for those intimately touched by tragedy, such media representations, commentary, and invitations to "share" become sometimes unintentionally, sometimes slyly absurd.

But this is part of our process. In a seemingly unending cycle of random unspeakable violence for which we can't seem to come up with an effective cure, nihilism and cheap shallow sentimentality alike make perfect sense. The culture of nihilism breeds nihilism.