“Computers May Yield Clues About Mall Shooter”

That’s an actual CNN.com headline. I don’t mean to single them out, but as my home page, they’re what I see first thing when I sit down at my computer. But all the news sites are running with the same type of thing, as are the TV broadcasts.

You want to know what kind of clues it’s going to give up? Spoiler alert: He was a fucking LOSER! That’s what. The media’s first biographical headline screamed, “Shooter was looking to be famous!” Well, thank you, Mainstream Media. With your help, aided and abetted by the second amendment, this LOSER got his wish.

Every fucking time one of these pathetic morons goes on a killing spree, the slavering cretins in the media play into their hands by making them as famous as they designed their acts of evil to make them. In Program, it’s called enabling. In my house, it’s called moral culpability.

Every time one (or two) of these suicidal jackasses’ sorry biographies becomes the lead story of the news cycle for a couple days, the killers win. Does the media not see this, or are they just so desperate for attention that, like the shooters, they just can’t help themselves?

Do they not see that they are helping breed the next tragedy by making media darlings out of these confused, disaffected loner-types? That there are plenty of other disaffected loner-types out there watching, doing the math that not only is taking their Guns & Ammo out for a massacre a way out of their seemingly dead-end existence, but that they’ll become famous too? It solves both their problems – that of feeling like an insignificant, unknown loser as well as the prospect of remaining one for another 50+ years?

Like I always do after one of these horrific episodes, I propose a self-imposed media moratorium on publishing the names and life stories of these heinous assholes. As a newspaperman myself, I understand it’s a big story and it needs to be covered, but like the way the names of rape victims are withheld, I believe the media has to exercise similar restraint when it comes to enacting the final step of spree-killers’ plans for them by making them famous after their unspeakable deeds.

There’s plenty of story to cover here without inspiring the next wave of publicity-seeking, suicidal LOSER to seek their own immortality. Eight innocent people were killed. There’s eight stories that deserve to be told right there. How did the shooter get his gun(s)? There’s a story. Why are guns still as easy to come by for the mentally unbalanced as loose joints at a Phish concert? There’s a story.

I could cover this tragedy for days without ever doing more than referring to the shooter as “the shooter,” and that as infrequently as possible.

Until the responsible, big-money media – I’m looking at you, CNN, General Electric, Viacom, Time-Warner, et al – stops playing into these LOSERS’ hands, we’re only going to see more of this kind of event.

My heart goes out to the families and friends of the victims. The victims are the people whose stories deserve to be told, whose lives should never have been snuffed out during a trip to the mall. These peoples’ names will never be as familiar as their killer’s. Their stories will never be told; in no time, they’ll be forgotten by everyone but their loved ones, while their murderer’s story will be told over and over again on the front pages of our newspapers and the first five minutes of the evening news. Not to mention the saturation coverage the 24-hour news nets love to lavish on this kind of story.

OJ, where are you when we need you?

I would like to read into the record the names of the victims, since you may not see them anywhere else for very long:

• Gary Scharf, 48
• John McDonald, 65
• Angie Shuster, 36
• Maggie Webb, 24
• Janet Jorgensen, 66
• Diane Trent, 53
• Gary Joy, 56
• Beverly Flynn, 47

We don’t need the killer’s computer to yield clues about what his problem was. What we need is a news media with the courage to stand up and say “We will not take part in the lionization of the next American spree-killer. We will not publish his photo, cite him by name or tell his life story.” If we remove much of future such killers’ motivation, we may just find ourselves with happier news to cover.