Our thoughts and prayers go out to all of those touched by the tragedy of Virginia Tech. As more facts roll in, it seems apparent that it was a senseless act perpetrated by a seriously disturbed individual.

In our talking head culture, however, that answer is insufficent because it doesn’t fill up enough air time in the hours of confusion immediately following the horrendous act. It’s not surprising, therefore, that Dr. Phil, offered the following commentary on Larry King Live–before the shooter or shooters were even identified:

The problem is we are programming these people as a society. You cannot tell me - common sense tells you - that if these people are playing video games where they’re on a mass killing spree in a video game, it’s glamorized on the big screen, it’s become part of the fiber of our society. You take that and mix it with a psychopath, a sociopath, or someone suffering from mental illness, add in a dose of rage, the suggestability is just too high. And we’re going to have to start dealing with that. We’re going to have to start addressing those issues and recognizing that the mass murderers of tomorrow are the children of today that are being programmed with this massive violence overdose.

As it turns out, the shooter, Cho Seung-Hui, was an English major who:

“[H]ad written two plays so “twisted” that his classmates suspected he might become a school shooter.”

So will Dr. Phil now rail against the evils of English class and playwriting? Of course not. He and others like Jack Thomson, don’t care about understanding the complexity of human tragedy. Rather, they exploit it to generate publicity and ratings by falsely laying blame at the feet of the video game industry.

They should be ashamed.

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CNN.com just published an overview of disturbing trend in the U.S. “Teen ‘Sport Killings’ of Homeless on the Rise” delves into the mindset of teens — sometimes as young as 14 — who are attacking homeless people for “fun.” One such attack led to the death of 49 year-old Rex Baum in 2004. According to the article, one of his attackers:

“[T]old police that killing ‘the bum’ reminded him of playing a violent video game….”

Notably, unlike many MSM articles on this topic, the author doesn’t pin the blame blindly on video games. Instead, the main culprit is pegged as peer pressure and mob mentality. As one of Baum’s attackers recently said:

“Every day I wish I could take it back,” he said. “I seen [the] repercussions among everyone. I didn’t think about any of this when [the beating] was going on.”

Sad. Simply sad.

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