Reflections on 9/11 and "Being Dave Klein"....

On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was working at a 100,000-watt 'Hot Country' radio station in northern Wisconsin. I was the morning deejay, went by the on-air name Dave Klein, which was the name of someone my first love met one night long ago - a hook-up that was a source of as much inspiration as devastation my freshman year of high school. I was long over the girl by the time I got the radio gig, but I don't think I'll ever forget my freshman year, and the name surely seemed more country music-appropriate than 'Jared Glovsky'. ("You want I should play some Shania Twain...!?")

That morning, I came into work like any other, keyed myself into the station at seven a.m., bleary-eyed, running on auto-pilot and sure to stay that way until I could get the coffee maker fired up, though I was in no particular hurry to make that happen. I rarely had a reason to be alert at that job. Early mornings at 100,000 watts were easy for me...easy breezy. Nobody would be there and nothing much started happening before 8 or 8:30, which meant that first hour was golden. I could let the automation crank out song after song from Toby Keith or the Dixie Chicks, and speak only intermittently, usually in and out of commercial breaks, knowing (with a fair amount of satisfaction) that whatever I said, and however frequently, it would be heard by a lot of people. Our broadcast tower sat advantageously at 1,100 feet above sea level, and my voice spilled out over Lake Superior, unimpeded by that flat blue tabletop, reaching three states and parts of Canada at the speed of light.

"Good Tuesday morning to you! 54 degrees right now in the Chequamegon Bay area under crystal clear skies! Don't forget we've got casino slots coming up sometime next hour, your chance to score some great casino prizes, and all morning long remember to listen for the sound of the touchtone phones! They're your chance to get into the drawing for a trip for two to Florida!"

Thus was my morning spiel in the last days and weeks of the pre-9/11 world. I would expend the bulk of my pre-coffee energy cranking all that out in the best radio voice modulation I could muster, steeping a little bag of country twang (just a little, to affect as much of "Dave Klein" as possible) in an oversized mug of (truly) absurd enthusiasm that routinely sloshed over the rim and soaked my shirt. It was an auditory illusion, of course. When the 'live mic' light switched off and the music started playing again, "Dave Klein" would turn down the speakers and resume his previous posture: slumped down in his chair like a partially deflated dummy, feet thrown up on the console, hands clasped comfortably across his chest, watching TV, half asleep. There was a little television in the on-air booth and on the morning of September 11, I was watching Welcome Back Kotter...I'm pretty sure...on TV Land. Or maybe it was Three's Company. Possibly Sanford and Son, come to think of it. But it was something fun and silly, for sure. Something friendly. Something innocent, frightless and forever young.

"Dave Klein" was twenty-eight years old, shaggy haired, scruffy-faced, a terrible dresser with a face for radio. "Dave Klein" was nestled comfortably, for the moment, in a decent-paying and cushy, but entirely dead end gig, contentedly watching TV Land. Frightless and forever young.

At 7:52 a.m., I segued into a commercial break with the promise of a weather forecast on the other side. Halfway through that bank of commercials, one of the sales people, Janice, phoned into the studio line, asked if I was watching TV. I said yes, told her that frigging Horshack still cracked me up after all these years (It MUST have been Welcome Back, Kotter!). She said I better turn on CNN. I said, okay, why? She told me a plane had flown into the World Trade Center in New York City. She seemed tense (though not hysterical) about it, but did not have a chance to elaborate. The commercials ended and I had to get back on-air with the weather.

"Sunny skies so far through Saturday, highs near 60, lows in the upper 30s to lower 40s! Chance of frost in the outlying areas away from the lake! You know what that means! Cover those plants, folks!"

I launched into the station ident, followed that up with a song, and hastily turned the channel on the TV to CNN.

I expected to see something unfortunate but mostly innocuous, maybe even just this side of comical. A single engine plane, probably, its ass end jutting out of a window high up, the pilot hanging from the building's antenna by his parachute. My mind was only able to conjure up a mere mishap in those last seconds of pre-9/11 life - a minor tragedy, with minor injury and no fatality. If I'd bothered imagining ten years into the future (though that was not really possible; "Dave Klein" never thought about the future), I'd have pictured people saying (laughing), "Oh I remember when that happened!"

What I saw instead was a gigantic fiery hole ripped out of the side of the north tower, black smoke pouring out of it, steadily upwards. My eyes widened, I felt a little pinch in my gut. I was not thinking terrorist anything, had no grasp yet of how bad it was, or would get (or still feel, ten years later), but I was muttering, "What the fuck..." aloud, to myself. This was more than I expected. More than Janice had alluded to on the phone.

Then, not five minutes after I had turned on CNN, as (ironically enough) OUR top of the hour news (CNN Radio) was playing, the south tower suddenly exploded in a massive sideways-shooting fireball. I was looking straight at the screen when it happened, but did not see the second plane approach, only the resulting explosion, and like the CNN anchors, I was confused at first, thought it was the north tower that had exploded.

Hearing the confusion, the disquiet, in the voices of the CNN anchors as they tried to figure out not only what had just happened but, now, what the hell was going on, gave me my first inkling that something was up, that not only was this bigger than Janice had alluded to, but this was beyond any garden variety tragedy.

I didn't do much of a radio show that day. I stayed glued to that little TV, watching in disbelief as each new horror unfolded. Co-workers started arriving, aware of what was going on by then, and crowded into the on-air booth with me. Once in a while someone made an attempt to collect himself, go back out to his desk and 'try to get some work done...', but he always came back eventually. Nobody got any work done that day. There was a sense in those first couple of hours, I think, though nobody said it out loud, that this might be the end. That hell was breaking loose and there was no stopping it. All of a sudden, 'casino slots' and 'touchtone phones', and trips to Florida and weather forecasts didn't seem to matter much.

I wasn't totally disengaged, however. I continued to talk in and out of commercial breaks, thinking that anybody listening, even just having their radio droning in the background, might be unnerved for not hearing a live voice at all. And on the suggestion of management, I started playing whatever patriotic country music I could find: In America by Charlie Daniels, God Bless the U.S.A. by Lee Greenwood. And after the second tower collapsed and news came of an 'explosion' at the Pentagon and another plane down in Pennsylvania, I went on and announced that everyone should find their way to a television as soon as possible and monitor exactly what's going on in New York and Washington, because it's going to affect all Americans.

"Things are changing right before our eyes."

I mention this only because it prompted a call on the studio line. A woman who had been listening to the radio all morning as she worked in her garden. She apparently had not caught our top-of-the-hour news breaks, or not listened closely. She had no idea what was going on, asked me to elaborate on what I'd said on-air, fill her in.

I was not comfortable explaining it to her. If CNN couldn't provide me all the answers, what could I possibly say to this woman? How best could I handle it? I didn't want to agitate her unnecessarily, but lulling her into some false sense of security somehow seemed more detrimental. In the end, honesty served as the best policy, though I think I barfed it all over her. I told her there were terrorist attacks going on out East. Thousands presumed dead. The towers had collapsed. The Pentagon was attacked. A plane had crashed in Pennsylvania. All flights were grounded now. Nobody was sure where the President was.

Et cetera.

She was aghast.

"I've been outside gardening all morning!" she cried. "I had the TV off! I was out there with the radio on! I listen to your station all the time! It's such a beautiful day!"

She kept bleating on excitably. She could have gotten off the phone at any time, gone into her house, turned on her television and found out for herself, but I sensed she was a bit afraid to. I let her ramble for a good five minutes, but finally had to beg off, and felt weird doing so. Felt like I was abandoning her...

Can it be that was ten years ago, already?

Everyone who was an adult then has a 'where were you...' story to tell. But I've had a chance to talk to some teenagers in my midst, who were just little kids when it happened. They have a unique perspective through the nebulous lens of childhood we don't often wonder about, being so (understandably) distracted with remembering and honoring the fallen and the survivors.

One kid who just turned nineteen remembers a TV being brought into his fourth grade classroom, the entire class watching the events as they unfolded. He said the teacher did not spare their feelings by sugar-coating it, that he was made aware - at least as much as one can be aware of anything at age 9 - that this was a national tragedy.

Conversely, another kid about the same age remembers no mention being made of it at all in his classroom, just everyone in the school being corralled into the gymnasium to play games for the day, abruptly, without any reason given.

Denial. Got it.

Still another, this one only in kindergarten ten years ago (kindergarten!), has vague memories of being aware that something had happened, and being let out of school early. She says the teacher alluded only to a plane having crashed, but by the time they left school, she says, other kids were already throwing around the phrase, 'World War III'.

Someone had caught wind.

Others I've spoken to were not at all aware something had happened...not aware of anything, in fact, until years later, and then learning of 9/11 only in newly burgeoning historical context, as it related to the fact that we are a nation at war. And that is the most significant part, I believe. These kids, from 15 to 19 years old right now, are at the vanguard of the generation coming of age that knows only their nation at war.

Really? Ten years? A decade since all that happened?!

Am I really thirty-eight years old?

I don't feel any different, and yet I know that I am. I can see it in my face every time I look in the mirror: the lines of aging, my hair starting to thin, not quite so shaggy anymore. For this loss of youth and time, I want to say I'm unhappy, but I can't. I'm happier now than I was back then. Not necessarily with (all aspects of) my life (in other words, not totally where I want to be), but with myself. I'm okay with things, with my age, my personal affairs. Facing forty doesn't seem to be as difficult as facing thirty was, and nothing is as daunting as it used to be. Nothing's quite as hopeful either, I must say...but it's not as daunting.

Truth is, I'm not a huge fan of "Dave Klein", looking back, and I would not give back the last ten years, if it meant having to be that guy again.

"Dave Klein" smoked like a chimney, still had acne for God's sake, wasn't as good of a father as he thought he should be, too young and too dumb to get it right. "Dave Klein" was still saying stupid things with the bluster of youthful certainty. "Dave Klein" was self-righteous. High strung. Hell-bent. He was less cynical than I am now, perhaps...believed more readily that great things were possible, that anything was possible. But that's because he never did anything, never tried. He was mostly lazy, self-absorbed, quick with platitudes masked as advice or opinions, but removed from any real risk, perfectly happy whiling away the days at that radio job.

All that was about to change. Within six months of 9/11, the radio station was sold, fully automated, and we were all laid off. "Dave Klein" went forever silent on January 1, 2002, and it was a good thing. At the time, it was jarring to lose my job, be pushed out of the nest, so to speak, but it spurred me to try different things, make a go of something substantial before I turned thirty. I could have stayed nestled in that tiny (albeit comfortable) cocoon forever.

The same could be said about this nation. In a way, we were all pushed out of a proverbial nest on 9/11, where we had bedded down and become complacent about the state of the world and our status in it. I agree with President Obama that we are a stronger society today. Make no mistake, it should not have happened, but it did, and it was a wake-up call for all Americans - to vigilance, gratitude and reflection. I truly believe that in the end, whatever we are or aren't today as a society, we're still better now than we were before that awful day. The only thing 'better' back then was the times...and even that is an illusion, ultimately.

It was the the best of times, it was the worst of times, as Dickens said...

So far, I have stayed away from the wall-to-wall 'coverage' of this 10th anniversary, and plan to for the rest of the weekend. I find the extent of it mawkish, and more to the point, for me, completely unnecessary. When it comes to 9/11, all the coverage and reflection I need or can stand goes on in my head every year about this time. I see the planes and the fire and the smoke and the dropping bodies and the confetti of madness. 9/11 is, and will always, and should be, a private ceremony. Oh, don't you worry, my friend with the bumper sticker, I will never forget. I simply don't need Anderson Cooper putting his two cents in, or endless analysis from pundits or experts, presidents or politicians telling me what happened, or didn't happen. I don't need to hear a History Channel compilation of every recorded message left that day by strained, uneasy voices now relinquished to the ages, or have the physics of the towers falling explained to me. I only need to know that they fell. And that Flight 93 fell from the Pennsylvania sky. And that the walls of the Pentagon crumbled.

But we, as a people - 'We the People...' - did not.

On the Death of Osama bin Laden

Not too long after the attacks of September 11, 2001, I made a prediction:

The newly branded War on Terror would be unlike any war we fought in the past; it would need to be fought differently, and thus, finding and killing Osama bin Laden, the architect behind the attacks, would not play out in a typical blaze of glory. We'd get him, no doubt about that (we better, for God's sake!), but instead of shock and awe (er, something to that effect), I prophesied, there would be more cloak and dagger involved, things going on behind the scenes, stuff we weren't told about but would have to hope and assume was taking place on our behalf (very much in our name, at the time...), until some dark night any number of months or years in the future, when bin Laden would step out of his mountain cave to light a cigarette, and some black ops agent would creep up behind him and slit his throat, dispatching him with a (fitting) whimper, not a bang.

Doubtless I'm not the only one to have imagined this scenario, or thought this is how it would go down, but in any case, it would seem the prediction - on both counts - turned out fairly accurate. While the War on Terror has taken the form of a 'typical' war in Iraq and Afghanistan, it has also played out in atypical venues, relied more than once on the help of civilians acting in the finest tradition of the Flight 93 heroes in the skies over Pennsylvania by taking matters into their own hands at certain key moments. Ordinary people who remain vigilant - not paranoid, but vigilant, and unafraid to take action - have become unexpected and much-appreciated combatants in this war.

As for bin Laden's death, there too I was partially correct: it wasn't quite the 'dark night/slit throat' scenario I predicted, but it wasn't a blaze of glory either (in the sense of armies marching toward one another)...it was a concise 'surgical strike' by a reportedly small team of U.S. Special Forces who came undercover of night. And this, after months (and years) of surveillance, interrogations and wire tapping, watching and waiting - with the patience of Job - for the right moment.

Truly astonishing, I'd say, that this operation, which had its roots as far back as last August, was not leaked. Not a word in fact, in this day and age when beans are spilled at the speed of light. That's testament to something...not sure what, but I'm glad for it nevertheless. American forces could have easily swooped down on this Pakistani compound to find bin Laden had already caught wind of their arrival and flown the coop.

But that's not what happened. We got the bastard, and as vividly as I remember September 11th, I will always remember hearing the news last night. I will always remember my cell phone 'blowing up' in a manner it usually doesn't - a barrage of staccato, headline-type texts announcing the news ('Bin Laden dead' or 'They got him', followed by numerous exclamation points), and passing those texts along to others. I will always remember diving headlong into a flurry of fast-fingered analysis and conjecture with certain people on my contact list about what went down, what it means and what will happen in the future; amidst this, feeling that my thumbs weren't adequately keeping up in real time like they should. One of my kids called me to relay the news, and that, in my mind and heart, felt as heady - as in, and of, the moment - as it must have felt for people at the Phillies-Mets game, where news of the death swept through the crowd in a similar flurry of Facebook posts and Twitter tweets, causing them to erupt into an impromptu chant of 'U.S.A! U.S.A!"

It was during this initial hullabaloo that I remembered, with a short exhale of breath, my own piece of 9/11 memorablia: a mock 'Wanted' poster, depicting bin Laden with a shooter's target directly between his eyes. Above it, the unequivocal affirmation, Wanted: Dead or Alive. Happy Hunting!

It was just a cheap freebie being handed out at a convenience store in autumn 2001, issued, like countless other similarly patriotic-themed items across the country at the time, by an outfit called Sherwood Targets. Not the kind of item I would otherwise bother with (in that I generally don't bother with any free stuff) but I made an exception. I had to. I needed something then; needed a way to express myself as an American. Reeling from an uneasy combination of fearful vulnerability and righteous indignation, I needed to feel part of the collective outrage.

The poster has hung somewhere in my house ever since; on the refrigerator for a number of years, but recently in my office on a cork board. Over time it's slowly started to yellow, curled around the edges a bit from constant exposure to a decade's worth of home elements, from sunlight through the window to spilled coffee to being rolled up, transported to a new town and set up in a new home.

But I've never taken it down. Through all the changes in my life and American life since 2001, all the fractious debate over Iraq, over Afghanistan, over geo-politics the world over, even as time wandered on and off, and Osama seemed to drift into the background of U.S. foreign policy and our national debate, even when it was wondered by many - by most, perhaps - if we would ever catch him - the poster remained on display, a symbolic affirmation of resolve for the only goal that really mattered: get bin Laden. Find him, and either capture him or kill him. One of the two. I intended to keep the poster up until the news came, as it did last evening, that one of these had been achieved.

The realization that I can now take the poster down (and should, in keeping with the pageantry, the symbolism) brings with it a strange bouquet of emotions.

The response to bin Laden's death has been - that I can see - understandably jubilant, but duly cautious as well. Everyone seems to know it's not over. The War on Terror will continue. In fact, it could get worse as bin Laden is turned into a martyr amongst his ilk, those bent on a) corrupting the interpretation of their holy script, b) hating America for no good reason. Bin Laden's death is a symbolic victory at best.

But if you believe life is, at best, a series of moments to be savored, this is definitely one.

Just sip slowly.




DEAD.

A Midwestern, Mid-Winter Daydream...

Is it just me, or is this winter dragging by at a snail's pace?

And is it just me, or does it feel more like winter - a winter of old - than it has in a while?

I've never jumped into the global warming debate too readily. Never been a fan of Al Gore, and when he began to spearhead the global warming movement, it left a bad taste in my mouth. That being said, I've hardly been able to argue with his inconvenient truth. I've been watching the evidence play out right before my eyes for the last fifteen years:

The winters just don't feel the same as they used to.

They're shorter, and they're warmer. What's causing this, exactly, I don't pretend to know (or be totally convinced of). I just know that the change is there.

In my mind, the last winter that felt like winter was 1995/1996. It was brutal in these parts. Snowstorm after snowstorm barrelled in from the west or swooped down from Canada throughout January and February. Long stretches of days failed to crack positive digits in terms of temperature. It started early that year I remember, snow on the ground in October, and stuck around well into spring, hitting us one last time in late April (as in, the last week of...) with a blizzard that would have done January proud. I spent a lot of that winter standing on the hood of my car, shoveling snow.

The winters before - '94/'95 and '93/'94 - were bastards too. And though it wasn't the worst, '96/'97 brought with it a typical blast of cold and snow.

But after '97, things started to change. We had an El Nino year, then a La Nina (which I don't pretend to understand, but resulted in two crazily warm holiday seasons), then began the half-baked winters that have defined the last decade: snowless (if not downright warm) Halloweens, dry hunting seasons leading in to rust-colored Thanksgivings. The first significant snowfall usually happens around the first of December, and 40 degree days puncuate most of that month with a sense of purpose they never enjoyed in the past. After the holidays, winter arrives, but the cold isn't quite as cold, doesn't last quite as long. The 'January thaw' has some muscle nowadays, some staying power, and there are more 20 and 30 degree days all around, and far fewer knock-down, drag-out blizzards. There are, in fact, long stretches with no precipitation at all. This means not a lot of snowpack to insultate crops and basements, and no flooded rivers and swollen cricks in the spring.

This has become the norm in the Midwest in the last decade. Irrefutable evidence that something is changing, or has changed. Anyone who fails to recognize this is fooling himself.

This year feels different though - feels more like winter. We've gotten a lot of snow here (kicked off by a monster blizzard in mid-December), and it's been pretty damn cold. It's felt dark and snowy and boxed in, the way it used to.

And I gotta be honest, it has sucked out loud.

I hate winter.

I suffer from SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder), and when it's bitterly cold as it is today(currently -7 degrees...at noon) I ask myself, why do I live here? Why does anybody choose to live in this shit?

It's 72 degrees at this very moment in Key West. I could be sitting outside pecking away at this post, hoisting my feet up on the chair opposite me, sipping my coffee for enjoyment not warmth and emotional sustenance, throwing my head back in deference to the sun.

I hold no illusions as to what life there or anywhere warm would be like. No island breeze paradise...it would still be day-to-day life. I'd still have to work, I'd still have bills to pay. There would still be hardship and regret. But man, there'd be no frostbite, no cold toes and runny nose...no 20 below mornings...no dark, joyless afternoons spent 'digging out'.

So why am I enduring day-to-day life here, I ask myself, when I could enduring it there.

Because we really are slave to our circumstances.

People I know say they'd miss the seasons if they lived somewhere tropical or sub-tropical, the 'changing of the guard' that helps punctuate the passage of time. Blah...I used to be on board with that sentiment, but no longer. I have two goals in life now: 1) my big road trip. 2) to land somewhere warm someday; to live out my golden years (at least) in golden spaces; to replace the holiday dinner of turkey and stuffing and cocoa with one of fresh crab and Coronas.

Sometimes my westbound thoughts turn southbound.

Media blah-blah ensuring Tucson shooter's ugly face gets carried into the future

Contrary to what Hollywood usually has to say, Americans have a high threshold for national tragedy. When bad things happen, we tend to take the bullet - one for the team, as it were - by becoming a team. We rise to the occasion to right the wrong and emerge - at least in the short term - a stronger people for it. This was the case during the Oklahoma City bombing in '95, the numerous school shootings (paramount amongst them, Columbine) of the late 90s and early 2000s, 9/11, and even Katrina, where it wasn't so much a failure of people as it was failure of government and infrastructure. (The 'people's' failure there, perhaps, was depending on government to be there; infrastructure not to fail...)

There is a human thread running through all of us that makes this possible, but I also believe it's a unique testament to American society. The diversity that makes this country great engenders an adaptability and versatility, which we draw from in times of crisis.

Thankfully, political assassination is infrequent in the world, but when it happens anywhere it can have devastating effects; it has been known in the past to plunge whole societies into war. For that reason, when it happens in America in 2011, I get nervous.

We don't need this...

We don't need to be rendered more fractious politically than we already are.

Yet that is precisely what has happened in the wake of the tragic Tucson shooting. In spite of the President's best efforts, in spite of all the stories arising (as they should) of heroism in those fatal moments, heroism that helped stave off further carnage, battle lines that were already slashed deeply into the sand got a little deeper. The divides between us - that often seem insurmountable without some kind of epic meltdown - became more pronounced.

In an instant, we were rendered more red state/blue state than ever.

And yet, in spite of the fact that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was amongst the targets, reportedly the primary target, I'm not entirely convinced that the gunman's actions in Tuscon were politically motivated.

Why? Because Jared Lee Loughner is a fucking nut job. Plain and simple.

He stood for nothing, and so accomplished nothing. There really is no reason, that I can see, to associate him with Sarah Palin, Tea Partiers or politics in general. Or, perhaps more accurately, no reason to associate them with him. This I say not in defense of Palin, Partiers or right-side politics, but in the interest of fairness and logic. Loughner seemed to be against everything, fighting the implacable (but convenient) enemy that is 'society'. There isn't, or shouldn't be, political hay to be made out of this, and whether America needs - desperately needs - to tone down its political rhetoric (and it does) has nothing to do with what happened in Tucson.

"Maniac with a gun kills six in Tucson."

That's how the headline should have read, and there was a time in this country it would have. 'Maniac with a gun...' would have been all there was to know, and the printing of the shooter's name would have been as much as most people would ever learn about Jared Loughner, the fact that Rep. Giffords was his target as deeply into the story as most would have bothered to travel.

Today, of course, it's a completely different situation. Endless speculation, finger-pointing and a sick fixation with sensationalizing the story in hopes of creating some kind of cult of personality (of fear, not adulation) for Loughner that befits his frightening mug shot, are the norm (that last a practice which has resulted in his final 'wild night' - as The Huffington Post referred to it - sounding too much like the treatment for an Oliver Stone flick).

None of it offers so much as a ficker of insight into his state of mind that we didn't already know merely from the fact that he opened fire in the first place.

What bearing does his red G-string have on anything?

It's a dirty and unnecessary (but titillating, nevertheless) business, trotting out Loughner's old friends and classmates and giving them 15 minutes of fame to spill what they know, particularly when their memories all seem vague at best, and the relevance of those memories as they relate to what happened in Tuscon last weekend speculative. All of it under in hopes of better understanding...what? HOW crazy he is? That he smoked a lot of dope? That he not only shot 20 people but wore a G-string while he did it?

"Maniac with a gun kills six in Tucson."

All that needed to be said.

I have heard a few pundits talking about the need for addressing mental health issues in the wake of the tragedy. Granted, that's healthy. There clearly were warning signs of Loughner's mental disintegration early on. But really, what could have been done? Just as the police can't intervene before a crime has been committed, what can students/friends/family be expected to do, short of trying to commit someone like Loughner, to stave off a tragedy?

Being a creep isn't a crime. Irrational behavior, unpopular - even offensive - opinions can't (and shouldn't) be crimes.

The truth is, Loughner probably could not have been helped. And talking it to death now, hammering out every detail of his addled mind and failed life, past and present, does more harm than good. Every word that is uttered adds to his mythos, ensures that just like Charles Manson is known today as a cult figure (namesake for the likes of Brian Hugh Warner; aka Marilyn Manson; his (Charles') songs performed by numerous artists), Loughner, who sports the same blank, wild-eyed visage, will probably one day wind up on the tee shirt of some as-yet unborn jackass who thinks he's being cute, or edgy. Safely removed from the tragedy, from the suffering, the fear, the sadness, this individual will somehow see himself (cuz it's almost always a dude who does stupid shit like that...) making a statement.

Loughner does not deserve that fifteen minutes of fame. It just might be exactly what he'd like to see happen.