Posted 1:09 PM by Gene

The $64,000 question is was the gunman -- and it appears there was one gunman -- high on something. If he was high on movies it is easy to see how the biz will tap dance its way to "responsibility" on that one, just as it did with so much inward glee after Columbine. But say what you will, and it tested our patience along with the most annoyed of us, the huge idiot-savantry over the Drunken Slob did not happen in a vacuum. Since SUMNER's Great Super Bowl Stunt we've imagined something's wrong with us, but such is our confusion that not only have we no answers, we can't even ask the right questions. One answer, of course, is that we collectively take no responsibility. Another is that our culture is in such a state of decrepitude that it offers no way out. The geniuses who could offer no solace after 9/11 are hardly in shape to ponder a comparatively puny massacre. But then so long as our superiors in BIGMEDIA run the show they won't have to ponder anything; they can beat us black and blue as always, the consequences be damned.

And now, of course, comes the time when we learn evertyhing about the killer, and nothing about the victims.

An apt gesture -- the stock market's way up.