Virginia Tech, the latest national Rohrschach test

Around 1921 Hermann Rohrschach, a Swiss psychiatrist, devised a method of emotional and mental evaluation by asking his patients what they saw in a series of ten "pictures" which he had created by dribbling ink on pieces of paper and folding them over. Along with the Minnesota Multiphasic, the Rohrschach is still the most widely used test to figure out when someone has seriously slipped a cog.

Media-event tragedies in the United States, such as the recent horrific mass killing at Virginia Tech, seem to have a Rohrschach quality for America's legions of talking-head pundits. The one thing infotainment and the expert & analyst industry can never do is simply leave something to its grim basics. True, that would be dignified, respectful, humble and appropriate. You know, all those things America never is anymore. Even while the barrel of the gun is still smoking, we've got people blaming the Virginia Tech administration for not extrapolating from one morning homicide to a nut case on a rampage killing 32 more. This gives the news a "narrative," a dramatic structure which produces someone to "hold responsible." Besides the gunman, that is, but he's useless because he's dead. If this produces pain and distress for people in the school's administration, if it's grossly unfair to impute after-the-fact clarity to an ambiguous reality which preexisted the horror, tough luck. We need an angle and we're going with it.

So that was the hook, and the networks and cable news can thank the homicidal wacko for spacing things out the way he did and providing a story line. Otherwise, the thing is simply what it is: another mentally disturbed, quiet loner who fantasizes about massive revenge on the world, and then makes it all come terribly true. And because America makes it easy for civilians to get their hands on guns which fire off rounds at a rapid clip and can be reloaded quickly, the quiet loner can do a lot of damage in a hurry.

The NRA and President George Bush were quick to reassure the deceased killer that he was exercising a Constitutional right in bearing arms. In what should have been an amazing display of insensitivity and obtuseness, that was almost the first thing Bush had his spokeswoman Dana Perino say. The President believes in the right to bear arms. It was not amazing, although it was grossly insensitive and obtuse, because we're completely used to his style by now. Bush just has a genius for being on the wrong side of everything.

Other viewpoints reflected the post-Columbine sensibility that we live in an alienated and lonely society; that we have become so inured to daily death tolls by the Iraq war that we no longer react as we once did to reports of mass killing; and that America is a uniquely violent culture. While these are "correct" readings of the blots, which in this case are the oozing blood stains of dead students, there was no need to say any of it now. Except as a way of avoiding a genuine emotional reaction, if indeed we're capable of that anymore.

I think it's very sad that all of us, including the networks, the cable shows, and the reporters, don't take the time simply to reflect on the real tragedy, to connect as humans to what happened before rushing in with a media story line. Thirty-two people, mostly young men and women but including one Holocaust survivor who died trying to protect others, had their lives cut short by a mentally ill person. That could happen anywhere. If there is a narrative, it is simply that life is a gift precariously bestowed upon us. We would do more to retain our tattered humanity if we left it at that.