Losing It

Image Gallery Dante Terzigni / www.danteterzigni.com

The first time I saw the mug shot I was at an Amoco station, 15 minutes from the nearest psych ward and 90 miles from home.

I didn’t need to stop for gas. My tank was still three-quarters full. But having just spent the past 48 hours trying to help a dear friend navigate his hometown’s heartless mental health care system, I figured a scalding cup of stale coffee might keep me from drifting into a ditch.

While I was waiting for the clerk to count out my change, my eyes fell on a copy of the daily paper, dated January 11, 2011.

The front page looked like something a newsboy in knickers would be hawking during the second act of a Batman movie. The headline type was extra-large and loud, the accompanying photo swallowed up all the space above the fold, and the subject—eyes wild, framed by pale cheeks, and a hastily shaven head—looked like a patient from Arkham Asylum. He even wore an off-kilter, vaguely villainous smirk.  

Jared Lee Loughner: Arizona’s assassin, the new year’s first mass murderer, and America’s bogeyman du jour.

By the time I pulled into my driveway, the coffee was ice cold. I hadn’t touched it. I didn’t need to. Enraged, my head swimming in adrenaline, I threw my bags inside the front door and sought out my unsuspecting wife. I wanted to scream about the banality of cynical sensationalism and wail about our country’s need to reduce everything to a biblical battle between good and evil. And I wanted someone to hear me.

It had been three days since Loughner senselessly murdered six people, including a 9-year-old girl, and shot Representative Gabrielle Giffords in the head. Yet the initial storyline was hopelessly fragmented and predictably off point. As was the case in the immediate wake of 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, the mine collapses in Chile and Kentucky, and countless other made-for-TV disasters, the chance to prompt a broad, meaningful conversation about our culture, our government, and our collective moral compass (or lack thereof) was already being squandered.

The first wave of stories out of Tucson set the table for yet another ideological food fight. On the left, scholars and columnists blamed Loughner’s outrageous crime on the proliferation of hate speech. Bomb-throwing conservatives, who thrive on turning themselves into victims, unleashed their attack dogs. Before the nation had time to shed a communal tear, Rush Limbaugh was defiantly defending his rabid constituency’s constitutional right to spit venom at whomever they want, whenever they want.

Gun control debates dominated the discussion for a few days, of course. There was even a measure of hand wringing over the antisocial webs we weave online.

In the midst of all of this, I kept expecting someone to broach the subject of Loughner’s actual state of mind. Reading between the lines, it was clear that he was mentally ill, as are nearly one-fourth of the people who populate the nation’s prison system. It was also evident that while the screeching tenor of public discourse might not drive a sane person to the nearest rifle shop, a confused, distraught individual might have a hard time distinguishing between Glenn Beck’s hyperbolic theatrics, Sarah Palin’s revolutionary ranting, and an online hate group’s call to arms.