It was the worst mass shooting since Newtown. Fourteen dead,
17 injured as of this posting. Naturally, the news media, including the major
networks and cable outlets, jumped into wall-to-wall coverage, as they were
obliged to do. The only problem was that afterwards, the information about what
was happening came out in sparse bursts. Some cable anchors even sounded a
little whiny about why more information wasn’t being released. So, those
anchors had time to fill.
Much of that time was spent discussing whether the shooting
was an act of terrorism. Terrorism has been defined generally as a violent act
to create fear, I think we can safely say, that was the broad motive involved,
though revenge is a good one, too. The only problem with the “T” word is that
it’s politically toxic. Listeners hear “terrorism” and many of them mentally
fill in a word before it: “Islamic,” just because that phrase has been drummed
into our heads.
Later in the evening, the news anchors were telling us that
it was more likely a disgruntled employee of San Bernardino County, which would
account for why a county agency holiday party was the target of the shooting..
Complicating the issue, though, is that the disgruntled one is of Middle
Eastern extraction. Anyway, if it wasn’t Islamic terrorism after all, what are
we supposed to feel? Relief? Of course not – so now we go back to the gun
control/mental health debate. When is it all going to stop?
Some of us may be upset with the frenetic wall-to-wall
coverage these things get, and the inane and sometimes inflammatory comments
made while the anchors fill time. I used to think that. But now we have social
media. If we didn’t have this intense coverage by the major media institutions,
we would be left to the mercy of Tweeters. Do you think we’d be better off with
an untempered rumor mill?
Whatever you want to call this incident, 14 people are just
as dead – the definition doesn’t really matter, does it. Perhaps this is the
new normal in our lives. The only thing that occurred to me was that if it
takes 18 months for a Syrian refugee to be admitted to this country, why can’t
we make it take that long to get a gun? Just wondering.
