Utter Madness

I know that I normally strive for political humor and satire and whatnot, but sometimes things happen that make you have to be serious for a moment. And in those moments, sometimes the true nature of some people shows the most.

The event that I speak of is obviously the Colorado movie theater killings. I am sure that everyone is familiar with what details are known about it by now, as it has been all over the news since early this morning. I don't want to discuss the monster that did this, or dwell on his motives. The massacre was the most tragic thing in the news today, but not the only tragic thing.

As the victims were still suffering from the wounds inflicted by this wretched excuse for a human, and those unfortunate enough to succumb to their wounds were still laying where they fell, some people in the media and elsewhere began using it as a political springboard, before anyone knew anything much at all about the killer or the facts about the shooting.

The first thing, literally just hours after the crime had been committed, was to suggest that the killer was a member of the Colorado Tea Party, simply because there was a member of the that Tea Party with a similar name. No real journalism was involved here, nor any kind of fact-checking. And this was on ABC, on Good Morning America, not MSNBC or some internet leftist video blog. Brian Ross mentioned this "connection" based on finding a name on the Colorado Tea Party website. One must wonder...why was he looking for information there in the first place? And if there was nothing to confirm such a connection, why mention it at all?

Or better yet, how cynical, sick, and morally base does one have to be to immediately politicize something like this? Is it really worth defiling the memory of the victims, and overshadowing a horrific event just to get in a few barbs against your ideological opponents? And if you think that is what I am doing right now, then you are wrong. I am singling out those who did this today. Even the President and Romney set aside differences and said basically the same things about the shootings. And most people on the left seemed to be just as upset about it as anyone on the right was. Most Americans, that is, saw this for what it was: a horrible thing that happened.

But some did not, and those people make me sick. It wasn't just the Tea Party thing on Good Morning America either. All day there have been plenty of jerks trying to use this thing to talk about the evils of guns, and how there should be gun control. Not that they feel bad for the victims and their families. Not that the shooter is an evil monster who deserves the most severe of justice. Not even wondering what could drive a person to do such a thing.

Nope, they seized on it as a blessed crisis to further their ideologies.

I ask again, how sick and morally disconnected does one have to be to do this?