In their desperation to come up with a sensationalistic scenario with which to exploit the tragedy in Virginia, the media are wallowing in a “blame something (anything)” cesspool of speculation. This is just another example of how shallow the media’s analysis can be.

This time the culprit is video games. The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that Jack Thompson, an anti-video game zealot, has been making the rounds of the cable news nets promulgating his theories on the threat of gaming to civilization. With regard to VA Tech, he told Fox’ Bill Hemmer:

“To be able to pull this off, with this high body count, Bill, one has to have rehearsed it in able to do it.”

In subsequent appearances on NBC he flatly declared that Cho was a player of Counter-Strike.

The only problem with this is that, as Chris Matthews pointed out, Thompson has no evidence that any of his assertions true. In fact, there is substantial evidence, supported by first hand witnesses, that Cho never played video games at all during his time at VT.

But I guess the media can’t let facts get in the way of a juicy narrative when they are trying to squeeze a few more days of ratings frenzy from a very real human tragedy.