The immediate aftermath of any American tragedy offers a heady potential for vile ideas. Details are scant, speculation is still wide open, motive is easily assigned—and in the rush to scoop other outlets, journalists don't have as much time to investigate claims, arguments or citations.
Given that James Holmes is responsible for a massacre, calling his behavior "erratic" feels like an awful understatement.
Here's something that almost all the mass killers of the last fifteen years or so have in common: they've been called "nerds." James Holmes, who allegedly murdered 12 people in a crowded Colorado movie theater on Friday morning, was described as a "nerd" by his uncle within hours of the shooting. Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik is, in the Telegraph, a "puffy-faced computer game nerd." Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were "innocuous nerds," the Los Angeles Times claimed in 1999.
A 49-year-old Maine man named Timothy Courtois was arrested Sunday morning and charged with carrying a concealed weapon and criminal speeding. He was driving 112 miles per hour on the Maine Turnpike, and he had an AK-47 assault rifle, four handguns, and multiple boxes of ammunition in his Mustang.
Following the Dark Knight Rises shooting in Aurora, certain gestures were made to pay tribute to victims of the attack. There was the collective decision from the studios to withhold but not really withhold box-office weekend results. There were countless opinion pieces about why the shooting happened and how it could have been prevented and what we, as a country, should be doing differently to ensure that it never happens again. There was a campaign determined to get Christian Bale to visit Aurora.
By contrasting the ease with which Aurora shooter James Holmes ordered guns and ammunition online with the rapid FBI response when a Muslim would-be terrorist in Aurora sent a single suspicious email a few years ago, Denver Post columnist Chuck Murphy states the obvious in his column today: this mass shooting might have turned out very differently if James Holmes had been named Ibrahim or Mohammed.
A fight that broke out during a screening of The Dark Knight Rises in West Homestead, Pennsylvania, resulted in several moviegoers nearly getting trampled underfoot after falling in the aisles while rushing to exit the theater.
Officially, there are no box-office numbers this weekend. Nothing to see here. Move on.
You can't have a national tragedy without at least one religious zealot crawling out of the woodwork and spouting off about the downfall of America. And lo, American Family Association news director Fred Jackson is up to the task.
