The response of right wingers and gun nuts has been uniformly disgusting. I only hope these groups are far louder and more numerous on the internet than they are in real life, because they make me ashamed to share a planet with them.

Old Media knew "If it bleeds, it leads" now it seems New Media has decided blood fever isn't so old fashioned after all. The corpses of these kids have barely had time to cool and there's already political hay to be made.

Red State Killer vs. Blue State Victims

Straight Killer vs. Gay Victims

Gun-loving conservative vs. anti-gun pussy

Pro teen dance vs. anti dance fogey.

Though they may be cleaning up the blood spatters on East Republican Street, the media bloodbath is just beginning!

You can find TONS of just that--"who gives a shit, a bunch of druggies got thinned out of the herd"--all over the conservative blogosphere. Some of them have even taken the time to find the Slog and drop a few bombs here.

It's all about hate and fear. Fear, fear, fear, hate, hate, hate.

I’m far from a hippie and could care less if some of the people shot identified as hippies or were 14 to 30, the situation is still sad. I wanted to point out that the people I knew that died in the shooting had much more to them than an enjoyment of electronic music. I was friends of Jeremy and Jason and never spent time at a rave with them. I have attended parties at the house and danced to Michael Jackson (everybody loves Thriller) in the late hours, had a great time, and made it home safe. I am reading peoples posting about how the stranger hates hippies and how we are apparently better off without the boys who held mediocre jobs and ate tofu, (Jeremy ate meat so I find that funny) and the comments were posted under Jeremy and Jason’s picture. Both of the boys families are reading the postings, why would someone post things about people they don’t know. Everyone has an opinion on the victims. Most of the negative ones are provided by strangers. This is a shock to our community because these wonderful people had a lot of friends and we all miss them

WTF Dan? If George Bush were assassinated tomorrow, you can't imagine yourself writing "I may have disagreed with the man on many points, but that doesn't make this incident any less tragic."? (Or would you write: "Thank God! Give the assassin a medal!"? Should Matt have reacted like that?)

The left is already agruing against restrictions on kids late-night party. The right is already arguing against restrictions on guns. While you may regard only one of those arguments as correct, you can't claim that it's okay for one side to activate its preemptive defenses while the other side shouldn't.

Charlie and friends: None of the idiots who are attacking your friends on this forum are worth a damn. Don't take it personally. Almost everyone in this city is flooding over with sympathy for the survivors. Don't worry about a few nutjobs.

Oh, come on -- don't pretend like you can't read.

Rosenberg's point was NOT that their deaths were irrelevant, but rather that their political and cultural leanings were irrelevant.

And how the hell can you fault a political columnist -- ahem -- for going to the extra trouble of making that point clear for the sake of his less attentive readers? (ahem again)

Please do some research. "Thinning the Herd" was first written here at The Stranger in response to AIDs.

It wasn't the conservatives who said it, it was the voice of The Stranger. Hate and fear have always sold newpapers of all political persuasions.

Some readers found it funny to read in The Stranger that AIDs was just "Thinning the Herd", so other readers no doubt find it amusing to read a bunch of druggies just got thinned out of the herd.

One person's hate cartoon is another person's funny joke.

If you don't like The Stranger why not read the mushy mouthed Seattle Weakly?

Or, Dan, to put it another way:

The fact that your readers have all misread Matt's point kinda says almost everything you need to know about modern American politics. eh?

Amen, David Wright and E. Thank you.

Dan, what's up? You should know better, friend. People listen to you.

Just want to say that the Stranger and Dan are wonderful and the response I recieved from the Seattle Weekly was awful and was obvios that they could care less about the situation but realy just wanted a story. So thanks Dan and the Stranger. Still #1 and all of the victims friends and family should know it.

Yabbut the Weekly did do a real nice job on the mug shot of Huff with Photoshop's "Crosshatch Brush Strokes" effect.

The Stranger has always offered a soft shoulder for a victim to cry on, a therapist to share your boo boo and know there's someone who really cares?

Give me a break. Read that crap elsewhere, I read The Stranger because it leaves the maudlin sentiment to the other guys.

these posts remind me of a story written by a famous guy who used to live in the U-District. Wendigo Psychosis, indeed.

http://www.pynchon.pomona.edu/uncollected/vienna.html

Just for the record, I don't think anyone missed anything in Matt's post. If he took the time to make that point, he took the time to think about it. Is Rosenberg an eliminationist? Perhaps not conciously, but something lurks in there to write that.

I don't advocate gun control as much as I advocate doing more socially to address violence and the circumstances that breed it. Gun control may not have worked in this case. He could have used other methods. The outcome would be different but the act would have been the same.

This was a place where these people appeared to feel safe. Unless there is new info, this was one of those random acts that drop the jaw. And there doesn't appear to be a clear understanding as to motive.

Dan, it looks like Rosenberg is on your side here.

Don't read into that paragraph what isn't there.

He's not blaming anything except Huff and that people are too trusting.

Just because you disagree with him on (most?) issues doesn't mean you should here.

Respectfully Republican had the same take on things as sound politics

Dorks.

http://plucrs.blogspot.com/

Dan, what I want to know is why when there's a shooting in Seattle you have all this well thought wonderful coverage, but when there's a shooting in Tacoma you use it as a chance to piss all over our community.

It's somewhat telling that IE7's Phishing Filter warns me that Matt's blog is a phishing site.

Dan, did you just stop reading the post after you got to the sentence "Who cares?" Because immediately after that sentence, Matt wrote, "The issue here is not raves; every generation has had drug-and/or-booze-fueled dance parties of one sort or another. Usually, people don't end up dead." It's pretty clear from the context that the rhetorical question being asked was not, "who cares about whether or not these people were killed?" it's "who cares about what they looked like, or what music they listened to, or what their politics were?" Your knee-jerk reaction and decision to print this comment completely out of context is exactly the kind of move we of more lefty persuasions always criticize when we see right-wing pundits doing it. Don't deliberately misread someone's comments in order to score a political point in the face of a tragedy like this one. I disagree with many of the points Matt makes in his commentary (i.e., about naive 20 somethings, gun control, etc), but I think what you've presented here is a gross and dangerous misrepresentation of his thoughts on the tragic deaths of these individuals.