Number to beat

I'm a news junkie, always have been.

I want to be plugged in. It's never been enough to know the latest news, but to find multiple accounts of the same event - then look for the different granules of information they are based on. This pastime has become less enjoyable in recent years - as the news has (at least in my opinion) turned considerably darker. I'm finding myself so put off by traditional mass media that I find myself tuning out more and more.

This is where I'm at with Virginia Tech. Not that this story is unworthy of attention - it's just that I am sick to death of the kind of attention it is receiving.

We've seen this movie before.

---

Start with a place at random: Littleton... Springfield... Blacksburg.

At first, the media just does its job.

Tell us what happened/is happening.

Not long after this phase, things start to go wrong.

Video is obtained. Solemn newscasters caution it may be disturbing, and then play it on an endless loop next to talking head interviews.

Eyewitnesses are found and interviewed live. Newscasters inch their questions towards painful subjects: "Did you see the shooter?" "Did you know the victims?" and finally "Did you personally see anyone shot"

Tell us about the blood.

Frequently, the eyewitness will become upset. The interviewer will visibly show their concern, "How are you holding up?" "Tell us how you are feeling," "How are you dealing with this?"

Are you scared? Are you in pain?

Early reports will have come in - they will be wrong.

The shooter is dead. The shooter is at large.
Ten are dead. Twenty. Less than twenty. More.

Possibilities abound, and are trotted out one after another by speculative journalists who aim to point out that the event may be even worse than first thought.

The carnage is tallied. The networks wring their hands and dispatch live crews, because modern media has conditioned us to expect that the person reading copy off a teleprompter must have a backdrop that is both live and relevant.

The police hold a press conference. It serves to dispel the more sensational possibilities we have been offered by the news. The shooter is dead. We learn the identity of the shooter, the true number of victims.

We learn, to our horror - the 'What' and the 'How.'

The facts established. The chorus of 'whys' can now begin:
"Why here?" "Why did they do this?"

We delve into the recent history of the shooter. "Where did they live?" "What did people think of them?" "What was behind their rage?"

There is a why. Tell us what it is.

These questions only serve as filler while bios of the known victims can be assembled and edited. We are shown grieving family members, survivors in tears.

Experts in grief counseling arrive in the form of talking heads. "What is this community going through?" "Tell us what you've heard from the families."

Pain. Show us the pain.

Recriminations, previously thought unseemly, become acceptable. The police were too slow. This should have been prevented. Lessened. It didn't have to be this bad.

Someone is to blame.

In a natural segue, the news shifts to "How do we stop the next shooter?" Criminologists, law-enforcement officials, and politicians spend ever-increasing amounts of time telling us the same thing:

Disturbed people who have easy access to firearms can hurt lots of people before we can stop them.

We cannot stop this.

---
All of this - all of the horror - is recorded and broadcast into living rooms, dorm rooms, workstations, bus stations, cars, bars, coffee shops, restaurants, every-frickingwhere -

-even some dimly lit basement where some man (and it is always a man) stops to watch. They see suffering on a national scale. The “worst ever,” they hear, over and over. Powerless, angry, they reflect on their wounds and those they hold responsible.

Then they think:

32. Yeah. I can beat that.