Like all of you, I don't know what (if anything) to make of the Fort Hood shooting spree yesterday. It's worth noting, as Glenn Greenwald does, how wrong much of the early reporting was. We seem to now be in Phase Two, where still no one knows anything except maybe how to spin things to support their pet causes. I'm thinking of arguing that the shooting proves that 6'3" comedy writers should be paid better.
Because of the Internet and cable news, we now have much faster access to "facts" and "analysis" (note the quotes) when something like this happens. I find myself going the other way with it; to be less likely to follow the story right away because the early picture is so incomplete and distorted. Like the columnist Jack Germond once said, "One of the things wrong with news coverage is that we're not paid to say 'I don't know.' So we have to make like we know even when we don't."