A Dark Night

What's in a number? A lot, by my count.

In times of tragedy, words are often inadequate. What can you say to comfort a person who lost a loved one in last month's mass shooting at a movie theater in suburban Denver? How do you make sense of the senseless? When a batty man, wearing a Batman-like suit of body armor, takes shots in the dark, literally, and kills innocent people during a midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises, the why? is hard to answer.

The how many? is not.

In the article pictured above, one more word would have been adequate. Its omission presents a skewed, unintentionally heartless take on the horror in Aurora.

"At least people were killed" makes it sound as if the situation could have been an outright failure, but the deaths of some people kept it from being a total loss, when, in fact, it was a total loss. The total? Twelve. A dozen lives taken by a deeply disturbed individual.

At least one person (this blogger) feels terrible.