32 dead at Virginia Tech today

32 people were gunned down at Virginia Tech this morning. When I turned on CNN they were all agog about the details - you could tell it was going to be a Story With a Theme and a Logo for a coupla days.

Now lets compare and contrast this for a second. Today's the 16th. Virginia Tech will be in the news for at least the next week or two.

On the 14th, 32 people died in a bus-bomb attack in Iraq. The story got a couple paragraphs mention and maybe a picture, a few words on the news - but it was just that days deaths from Iraq, nothing more. The story will not have a musical theme, a logo, and not much mention.

I ask a rhetorical question: how are the 32 human beings in Iraq so different from the 32 at Virginia Tech? Is it not an equal tragedy? Is it just possible that we're so hardened to hearing about deaths in Iraq that it somehow minimizes their impact?

Think about it.