Awesome! I love Christopher Hitchens. Or rather, I think he has a great way of stating the obvious, even when nobody else wants to, or thinks it will offend someone. Here is an audio of what he has to say about the media coverage of the VT massacre. Here is an excerpt from the text at Slate...

Almost everybody in the country seems to have taken this non-event as permission to talk the starkest nonsense. And why not? Since the slaughter raised no real issues, it was a blank slate on which anyone could doodle.

It's true, and we need more people willing to risk offending the overly fragile temperaments of others. Lest you think he has no sympathy for the stricken left behind - those close to the slain that have a right to be stricken - he says, "One should express a decent sympathy for the families and friends of the murdered, a decent sympathy that ought to be accompanied by a decent reticence." The operative here is 'decent'. What always comes across from the drama kings and queens cannot be called decent. There is always someone standing by, waiting to pounce at the mere thought of tragedy, to gush at someone else's misfortune. Isn't this a tragedy in itself? He illustrates this by citing other tragedies and events following...

At the time of the murder of Lisa Steinberg in New York in 1987, he was struck by the tendency of crowds to show up for funerals of people they didn't know, often throwing teddy bears over the railings and in other ways showing that (as well as needing to get a life) they in some bizarre way seemed to need to get a death.

Very good point I think. He didn't know how true it really is though, he couldn't. While looking into how Lisa Steinberg was relevant, I Googled the name. It is unbelievable, this website I came up with, Find a Grave. You can browse by claim to fame, or "stroll through our online cemetery". It is taking morbidity to somewhat of an extreme. I have to admit though, my wife would probably find this site interesting.

Then there is the fact that there wasn't the much grieving for the victims of the tsunami. Not that there should have been, but if we were to grieve to 'scale' so to speak, we would still be grieving. Hundreds of thousands died there. It is lost on those mourning for days for the victims of a few days ago that those thousands were just as human. Does the distance make a difference? That was a tragedy that deserved the outpouring.