The Vultures Come Out

Somehow I managed to go through half my day without hearing about the massacre at Virginia Tech. Everybody wants to get the information on this but clearly the media have learned nothing from Katrina. They are engaging in conjecture and rumor when the obvious choice should be sticking with the facts.

The story listed above says 29 are dead while another report on google news says 21 and another says 32. These are numbers that are understandably difficult to pin down and I'm not really complaining about that.

What agravates me are the interviews with students in which the talking heads try their best to draw out complaints about why the campus wasn't locked down, why there wasn't more caution after bomb threats last week etc.

The fact is that all of those questions should be and will be answered but now is not the time that any of that can be answered with any accuracy. All it serves is to create chaos.

Another complaint. A talk radio host today was interviewing a student, asking what they witnessed. The student wasn't delivering the goods in his descriptions. He didn't really recognize gunshots for what they were. He thought, but wasn't sure that he heard screaming. He was basically being honest in the aftermath of the event. That's when the host announced that they would play the audio of a cel phone video of the event. After it played, the host actually asked if that was what the student heard. The student already described his experience and it was nothing like the audio...the host was just going for drama. What a jerk.

One of the Columbine parents was just on FOX. I can understand their passion and anger but what do they have to contribute to our understanding of what happened at Virginia Tech today?