Say nothing

To my embarrassment, ever since my novel We Need to Talk About Kevin was published in 2003, I’ve been a go-to girl regarding American mass murders. I’m embarrassed because my credentials are so poor — I’m only an expert on a school killer I made up — and because I’ve so little to say. That’s one of the standard reactions to these things, whose scale seems only to escalate: being struck dumb. That’s why Sky News and the BBC ring me up. They’re desperate, you see. They have nothing to say either.

In the days I accepted many of these gigs, I made what I hoped was one serviceable point. As most of the shooters want attention, surely our mistake is to give it to them. The press going large about these atrocities, combing through the culprits’ every available biographical titbit for weeks, only inspires other would-be killers, who often yearn to be famous so badly that even posthumous celebrity will do. I’ve despaired how much easier it is to make a name for yourself with villainy than with accomplishment, for in terms of raising one’s profile, mass murder is fiendishly efficient.

So I’ve suggested we stop delivering what the malefactors seem to crave. Play down their spiteful temper tantrums. Don’t do long features on their backgrounds, their dysfunctional families, their grievances. Because deploring giving these miscreants attention was still giving them attention, a few years ago I officially demurred from comments on mass killings — like this one.

The rest of the media can’t take my advice any more than I can take my own. It’s impossible to ‘play down’ the murder of 58 country music fans on Las Vegas strip, along with the injury of more than 500. When a sniper with many guns on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay strafes a music festival with automatic gunfire, placing the story below the fold on page ten would be journalistically ludicrous and morally warped.