New York Times Surveys Dead Bodies at Michigan State, Finds 'An Uncomfortable National Spotlight'

Michigan State is the latest community to be ravaged by a mass shooting as a gunman opened fire on classrooms and the student union last night, killing three students and critically injuring five others. This is an entirely too predictable and commonplace occurrence in America, meaning it's been relegated to below-the-fold status on the New York Times' website.

The outlet is providing live updates on the developing situation, though, with all the tact and humanity of the most tone-deaf AI service in existence. They have surveyed the dead bodies and emotionally broken student body and come up with this headline, somehow connecting what happened last night to the university's poor handling of the Larry Nassar scandal.

Allow me to be blunt. This sucks. It's mind-blowing that, in some misguided effort to wrap some sort of tidy bow around two disparate and heartbreaking tragedies affecting the same community, they've assessed the carnage and opted to place optics over humanity. More than that, it defies belief that a human being with functioning empathy and respect for others thinks this way. It is not normal. And it deserves to be called out as such.

This is a stark example of a global news brain clouding judgement and resulting in a flagrant disregard for the victims in each instance. Two monsters terrorized the same extended community. In the first instance, that community banded together to hold those responsible for making it worse accountable. The Nassar scandal still haunts so many who are connecting to the victims and that healing takes place in uneven steps on a level the New York Times or other publication can never hope to understand without diving in and rolling up their emotional sleeves.

Those of us who are Spartans wear that baggage and guilt knowing the past cannot be undone. With the horror of last night still fresh, we are struggling to terms with what happened and how we will respond to it, with the optimism that if any group can over-achieve against long odds, it's ours. That national spotlight the Times finds so important as specious and fleeting and, damningly, will shift to the backyard disrupted by a mass shooting. It means nothing beyond outsiders craning their necks.

It's hell that this is the best they could offer. Perhaps we shouldn't expect any better. The journalistic failure of bundling up two unrelated buckets of pain is gross yet ultimately unimportant. The lack of humanity is tougher to swallow.