From a different perspective than Brattlerouser’s excellent commentary on the broad gender perspective of this tragedy, I’d like to offer my take on this, as well.

Now, not trying to diminish this tragedy of immense proportions because of the loss of so many innocent human lives, but as this tragedy unfolds, I wanna ask our readers to witness the other tragedy here – exploitation from all sides of the political spectrum.

First, there’s the obvious – the news networks running this 24-7 for the next few weeks, as they put all sorts of sensationalist spin on it and rake in the bucks, while failing to ask even one important question. Bush will use this one to try to curry favor for him and his sinking ship, and quite possibly use it as an excuse for more infringements on civil liberties. And of course, the media will not even question how a few contrived words from a president who is knee-deep in the blood of innocents in violence and is less popular than dogshit will somehow make anything better.  The gun-control crowd will once again use it to advance their agenda (which IMO, the problem lies with our fetish-like obsession with guns and violence more than the guns themselves) and some jerk in the NRA will talk about how this might have been prevented if some of the students were packing heat (they can’t use the ‘stop illegal gun sales’ angle because it seems at this point they were obtained legally). The racists will obsess over the fact that the shooter was an Asian (while conveniently overlooking the fact that he was a legal immigrant). We’ll hear tons of talk about ‘prayer’ in the media, yet not one person will question either if perhaps this was ‘God’s will’ or the wisdom in praying to a God who enabled it to happen in the first place (kind of like asking your dad to forgive you after he beat the living hell out of you for no reason). And of course, the Religious Right will once again blame this on our increasingly secular culture, perhaps throwing another dig at the gay community, like they did on 9-11.

And very few  Americans will even bother to ask why this kind of thing seems to happen so much here. Our culture is sick, and there doesn’t seem to be a doctor who wants to look at  the illness itself… they can’t seem to see past the symptoms.