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VMI77 wrote:

baldeagle wrote:

K.Mooneyham wrote:There have been many items surrounding the heinous act committed at Sandy Hook Elem. that just don't seem right; most of that I attribute to the media and their agenda. However, the one item that distinctly bothers me is that Robby Parker guy...I'm sorry, call me names, but I'm pretty sure if something terrible happened to one of my kids, i just wouldn't be smiling and grinning and THEN turn on some distressed look for the camera...if I had to guess how I might react to something so horrible, I'd say I would likely alternate between VERY sad and VERY angry, certainly the day of...yeah, I don't know what's going through that guy's mind...but it sure doesn't seem right.

No one can possibly know how they will react to a given situation until they experience it. Trust me. I know from personal experience. We do people a disservice when we assume that they would react exactly the same way that we think we would in a given situation when we have no way of knowing that for a fact. Unless you've lost a child in a mass shooting, you only think you know how you would react.

Or as the old aphorism goes, Never judge a man until you've walked a mile in his shoes.

I take it you've seen the interview referred to? It's bizarre, not because of the joking and smiling, but because his change in emotions is so obviously forced.

Yes, I've seen it. I didn't think the emotions were forced. When you've been confronted with an unthinkable tragedy that affects you personally, you go through a range of emotions far beyond what others do during a "normal" loss. It's not all unusual to laugh, cry, scream and not react at all based on the inputs you're getting and your emotional state at the moment.

I think we humans are far too judgmental of others. What really frightens me is when police detectives use those unusual reactions as a basis to decide a person must have been involved with the crime they're investigating. Sometimes it's true, but sometimes it's not.

K.Mooneyham wrote:There have been many items surrounding the heinous act committed at Sandy Hook Elem. that just don't seem right; most of that I attribute to the media and their agenda. However, the one item that distinctly bothers me is that Robby Parker guy...I'm sorry, call me names, but I'm pretty sure if something terrible happened to one of my kids, i just wouldn't be smiling and grinning and THEN turn on some distressed look for the camera...if I had to guess how I might react to something so horrible, I'd say I would likely alternate between VERY sad and VERY angry, certainly the day of...yeah, I don't know what's going through that guy's mind...but it sure doesn't seem right.

No one can possibly know how they will react to a given situation until they experience it. Trust me. I know from personal experience. We do people a disservice when we assume that they would react exactly the same way that we think we would in a given situation when we have no way of knowing that for a fact. Unless you've lost a child in a mass shooting, you only think you know how you would react.

Or as the old aphorism goes, Never judge a man until you've walked a mile in his shoes.

I watched 14 seconds of it. I can tell you it's bogus. Why? It's based on news media reports, which are notoriously incorrect in the early hours and days of a breaking story. Because the media reports multiple shooters does not mean there were. It simply means the media reported it because it was sensational.

I'll give you an example. (I used to blog about the media on a blog named Media Lies.) Back in 2004 AP reported that a "small car" sized meteor had struck a town in Washington State. I thought that was pretty incredible, so I did some research on it. A car sized meteor would create a crater larger than a football field. Surrounding damage would be extensive, including fires, dead animals and dead people.

First, the article states "The original story, which AP released at 7:03 a.m. EST, stated that someone identified as Bradley Hammermaster, and purported to be a University of Washington astronomy instructor, had told KIRO Radio in Seattle that a piece of meteor "about the size of a small car" had hit just before 3 a.m. PST."

Mr. Hammermaster didn't exist. I checked the U of Washington website.

But the story might still be true. So I called the Mayor's office in the town where the meteor supposedly hit. He said they were not aware of any meteor hits in the area. That small amount of fact checking was more than the media could be bothered to do.

AP later retracted the story. Very few outlets that published the story also published the retraction.

If you trust anything the media "reports" without independently verifying it, you're not likely to ever know the truth.