There Are No Words

What's God got to do with it?

For all but the hardest hearts, it's tough to go beyond recent events. But at the very least, the recent mass murders in Newtown, Connecticut may have given us information we can use. What have we learned?

1. Parenthood never ends. Babies sure are a lot cuter than teens, and even teens are cuter than surly young adults, but regardless of their ages, some children need parenting longer than others. Sadly, the mother of the shooter--his first victim so there you go--apparently tired of her role as Mommy long ago. Following her divorce, the still young and attractive woman allegedly spent several nights a week hanging at a local bar, where she would often pick up the tab for strangers. She also indulged her unique hobby, gun-toting, at a local shooting range. All the while, her oddly withdrawn, possibly autistic and apparently friendless youngest child was where, doing what?

2. Television journalism is to journalism as military music is to music. Not interested in giving us the news as much as propelling their careers forward, the assorted ladies and gents of the media have tried hard to outdo one another in the on-air grieving department, each one asserting that "there are no words" but still yammering on with plenty of them. With their boots on the ground in Connecticut, each one dressed in black, the motley crew have struggled to win the subliminal contest with over-the-top expressions of heartfelt compassion. I declare Anderson "Pretty Boy" Cooper the winner, as during last night's broadcast in which he showed pictures and said a few words about each of the dead, he became so choked up I feared he might puke. (He didn't, but I wanted to.) A close second is Geraldo Rivera, who likely sat up late into the night with a thesaurus to derive the long list of words to describe his feelings. (Like we care.)

3. Our president is a shameless publicity hog. When I first heard that Obama was going to personally meet with and console the families of the fallen, I was heartened. "How nice of him," I thought, "for finally doing a selfless act of kindness." So I was stunned, shocked, dismayed, and disgusted when I turned on the TV to find the Crier-in-Chief standing on a stage and spouting his typical empty, hollow, high-blown and sappy speech to a huge audience, not to mention the whole nation, in prime-time of course. One can only imagine how comforting that must have been to the parents.

4. Organized religion is more ridiculous and superfluous that ever. How any member of any clergy can say "God had a plan" or "God called them back early" or "God, in his infinite wisdom" when referring to a clearly deranged individual who took it upon himself to murder 26 people, among them 20 adorable and trusting little children, at close range, with high-powered assault weapons, is way beyond my comprehension. The only plausible explanation is that they each drop acid before they go out to address their flocks.