OK, granted - I've been living under a rock for the last couple of days. Happily, I might add.

(Hey, it's still thirty-five degrees outside. What would you do?)

But there was a shooting rampage in northern Minnesota yesterday that's claimed 9 victims, 10 with the teenage shooter. 5 of the victims were high school students in class.

And from where I sit, this story is taking a back seat everywhere. Instead, the nation is gripped by the fate of a brain-dead person in a hospice bed, whose case has been reviewed 20-times over by the judiciary. Granted, the legislative, Constitutional, and biomedical ethical issues associated with Terry Schiavo are important and intriguing...but the fact that school shootings like Columbine are still par-for-the-course in this country should be at least equally alarming.

CNN is currently giving advice on living wills. Before, it was a segment showing videotaped footage of a clash with U.S. troops that left about two dozen insurgents dead. Next up, it's gas prices. After that, a feature on an amputee back in action in Iraq with your intrepid correspondent, Wolf Blitzer. I wish I were making this up.

[getting up on soap box]

Have we really become that accustomed to school shootings? Did we go through the requisite shock of Columbine and then move on? Are we that desensitized? Remember back in '99 when the country was consumed by shock and mourning - when friggin' Celine Dion showed up to comfort the families?

What, if the shooter had killed 13 kids instead of 5, surpassing the Columbine 12-student mark...would we give a shit then? Are records made to be broken, otherwise we don't care, and we don't give equal weight to the loss of the victims in this tragedy since the body count is only half?

Or do I need to pull an Ahmed and bring race into this, too?

I mean, let's be frank: Red Lake, Minn. isn't exactly Littleton, Co. The shooting took place on an Ojibwa Nation Indian reservation.

Whatever the reason this story isn't getting more play, the degree to which we just accept this degree of gun violence in our culture is pretty obscene.

I dunno...I heard about this shooting last night, and woke up expecting something totally different from the media. I'm bothered by the questions their coverage brings up.