What can you say?

Being part of the media gives me the creeps during tragedies. True, many people do a lot of good, dogged, necessary work in gathering information people want or need to see. But the siege-like atmosphere after the fact, with continuous live coverage via satellite truck, is excessive, tasteless, and pointless.

But then there are the poets. News agencies gather information and hope for an emotional response. Poets, like Nikki Giovanni above, simply turn words into emotion. It almost goes without saying that the literal meaning doesn't matter as much as striking the right tone, which her short performance seemed to do. If you saw the well-meaning drone of the previous speakers, as I did at work, my meaning would probably be clearer. But I'll stop there since the only thing left to say about the tragedy itself is to offer condolences.

One general thought, though. At some point during the TV coverage, the talking heads started speculating about how yesterday's events should shape gun control policy. The answer is: it shouldn't. Policy regulates society. It is a set of rules put in place to govern large groups of people who are assumed to be rational actors. It is not intended to account for a crazy person, who, almost by definition, is not part of that society. You simply cannot prevent something so patently irrational with a piece of legislation. And in focusing on trying to prevent "the next (insert horrible event here)," it seems inevitable that the focus would fall away from enacting laws that are effective across the greatest swath of society. It just seems obvious that laws should be geared toward people who will take into account the costs, punitive or societal, of their actions, not someone so clearly deranged. (Leslie, feel free to jump in here and correct me if I'm wrong.)

It is, however, a good time to evaluate crisis response plans and the like. For example, as a painful intellectual exercise, consider this link, via Tommy. That's one of the more disgusting examples of how a mind can panic that I've seen.

UPDATE: In comments, Amy asks, "what are your thoughts on NBC's airing of the video?"

I didn't see it, but in general, I think it's appropriate. There's a significant public interest in seeing the video and perhaps understanding the killer better — even if it's only to the extent that people realize he was completely, utterly insane. What matters is what the news agency does after it's adequately satisfied that public interest. It's a blurry line, but there's definitely a point at which coverage goes from informative to exploitative.