The Bang Bang Theory

One of the inevitable consequences of the shootings at the premiere of The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, is that the film will be forever tainted by these senseless killings. They will always be referred to by the media as the 'Batman Murders' or 'Batman Shootings', despite the fact that there is no apparent causal link between the two things. (Unless, of course, it transpires that the perpetrator is a fan of Spiderman and was trying to give the new Spiderman film a boost by wrecking the Batman flick's box-office prospects by associating it with mass murder). But that's the thing about lazy journalism - which these days seems to be mainstream journalism - everything has to be simple and joined up. Indeed, I'm surprised that the tabloids haven't drawn a parallel between the gas mask that the killer allegedly wore and Bane's costume (which includes a gas mask-like respirator) in the movie.

Early on you could see that the story was going to travel the well-worn path of lazy journalism's characterisation of lone mass murderer's. They quickly found people to describe the suspect as being a 'loner', whilst the fact that he was a PhD student and a science graduate clearly marked him out as some kind of 'nerd' or 'geek'. In lazy tabloid journalist world, it is well known that 'normal' people who do 'normal' jobs and have 'normal' hobbies like watching TV or football are never crazy killers. Only those sad friendless losers with educational qualifications go 'postal' and blow away complete strangers. If only they'd played sports, eh? Would have made 'men' of them and instilled a sense of camaraderie which precludes becoming a killer. Geeks and nerds can only ever be one of two extremes in tabloid world: sinister creeps or amusing nebbishes. Yep, either they're mad scientists or the harmless eccentrics in things like The Big Bang Theory. Mind you, there's probably an unaired episode of that, where Sheldon's research grant is cut and he goes on a murderous rampage on campus, armed with a homemade light sabre, before taking Penny hostage and demanding that William Shatner be restored as Captain Kirk in the next Star Trek film. Anything to reinforce those lazy stereotypes...