Written Hurriedly and Not Edited

We were all horrified Friday at the demented acts of a man in Aurora Colorado, who entered a packed movie  house, set off canisters of tear gas and then shot twelve complete strangers to death and wounded many more. Among the injured survivors were a baby and a child. The perpetrator then quietly surrendered to police.

He appeared in court today, hair dyed bright orange, apparently bored and amused in turn by the proceedings. Next week he will be formally charged with twelve counts of first degree murder and numerous counts of attempted murder.

Never concerned about being wrong, Congressmen, and ministers immediately chimed in, offering all manner of opinions about the gunman's motivation. One reverend went so far as to say any of the victims who were not Christians (of his own stripe) would be going to a terrible afterlife. I'm sure that provided a lot of comfort to the grieving families and friends.

Today's court appearance was carried live on CNN and MSNBC, and I'm sure by other news outlets.

I don't argue that this wasn't newsworthy, but I did notice a streamer across the bottom of the screen at one point, reporting that a pickup truck in Texas had crashed with thirteen fatalities. Nobody broke into programming to cover that tragedy. Perhaps deaths on our highways are common enough that we hardly do pay attention to them anymore.

Both of these events are awful. One was a deliberate crime and the other an accident, but the people in both of them are just as dead. The anguish experienced by the people who loved the deceased is just as great. One gets an enormous amount of media attention and the other is all but ignored.

Here's my point. We are fascinated in a macabre way with ferocious acts of violence, but we have become anesthetized to the everyday violence that is all around us. Our culture is not sick, it's crazy. We accept thousands of road deaths each year in exchange for the convenience of our cars and moving our commerce over roads, even knowing what the price of that convenience is.