Nowhere has the health of America’s quality press been more in evidence than in its critical coverage and analyses of the Aurora massacre. Seen by this outsider at any rate, the coverage also illustrated a gloomy fatalism about the state of American society. In the Sundays, soon after the tragedy, commentators speculated that, a silver lining in the cloud, the tragic events might elevate the political discourse during the remainder of a campaign that has drawn much criticism for its smallness in the face of the country’s problems. By midweek editorials were more world-weary. Many of the victims – chance survivors of terrible bad luck – would have to pay for their medical costs and so a lot of the newspapers started running campaigns to raise funds for them (compare and contrast with Europe, where survival in such tragedies is not usually accompanied by the threat of bankruptcy or lifelong debt). It had also become plain that (notwithstanding what Mitt Romney opined in London) the killer had  ordered much of his equipment from the internet and had bought the rest legitimately over the counter. Here the commentaries very soon recognised that neither of the two presidential candidates could afford to show any critical attitude towards America’s all-powerful gun lobby, leading to (for example) the following depressing headline in Western Colorado’s The Daily Sentinel: ‘OBAMA WILL NOT PUSH FOR STRICTER GUN LAWS, WHITE HOUSE INSISTS.’ Ten days on, the press had subsided into several acknowledgements: while nothing substantive could or would be done, this sort of madness would surely occur again. In the meantime, on Tuesday, 24 July, the Chicago Tribune reported in a tiny article on a truck crash in Texas that had killed fourteen and injured nine. The dead and injured were suspected of being illegal immigrants. There was no further comment or analysis on this tragedy.