In a better world, no one would attempt to exploit his madness for political gain. We would instead focus on the contributions of Ms. Giffords, by all accounts a laudable public servant. We would celebrate the lives of the other victims, and we would praise the survivors who intervened to tackle Mr. Loughner and disarm him before he could kill others—like 74-year-old retiree Bill Badger, who was grazed in the head by a bullet before helping to restrain the shooter.
But the shooting news had barely hit the wires on Saturday before the media's instant psychoanalysis put the American body politic on the couch instead of Mr. Loughner. "Bloodshed Puts New Focus on Vitriol in Politics," declared a story in the New York Times, which focused primarily on the tea party and Sarah Palin in the context of mass murder. The story even hauled in opposition to health-care reform.
Politico, the Beltway website, chimed in by quoting a "veteran Democratic operative" advising the White House "to deftly pin this on the tea partiers," just as "the Clinton White House deftly pinned the Oklahoma City bombing on the militia and anti-government people" in 1995.
Shouldn't a publication insist that someone urging the exploitation of murder