Man with a Gun

Student punk plugs principal. Lone "English" shoots a class of Amish girls. Is there a new wave or pattern forming? Media awash in "copycat" mongering, looking to sell some more ad space for home equity loans, flab-flexers and floorwax.

How often does this sort of thing happen in other countries? What inner, isolated, brewing terror, what spooky sadness and what hungry spectacle.

Youngish man with childhood wounds thinks, years or decades later, that blowing other often younger people away will feel better than keeping it all bottled up inside.

Pretty girl, rich man, young man, man with a gun.

We don't see a lot of elegant diplomacy on TV. We don't see hardly any patience or perseverence. And random acts of kindness? Only on Sunday mornings. Mostly we see seemingly random acts of mayhem American style.

Most we see (and export) tough guys and tougher guys. Some shows the tougher guys are the good guys, and in other shows the bad guys are the tougher guys. On good days, the good guys just lean menacingly on the bad guys, and a little good wins after a lot of bad. But on the bad days before and after, in last week's and next week's episode, it gets down to guts, guts and blood. After the leaning comes the guts and gut busting and guns. The guns get the final words and the last smirks. These make up the language of our popular dramas on bad days, so it's no surprise it hits home full bore point blank.