Fears that the news media would bring back the ‘going postal’ stereotype in the wake of the Goleta killings have so far not, for the most part, come true.

A Google news search for ‘going postal’ the day after the incident turned up a large number of hits, but the vast majority came from an Associated Press story that was carried on many sites, often more than once as it was updated with new developments. The AP dispatches mention, fairly deep in the story, that a series of killings in the 80’s gave rise to the phrase.

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Nothing, really. It helps, of course, to talk about tragedy, but nothing anyone can say will make sense of last night’s tragedy in California. What hit me when I saw the pictures of the shooting victims in the Link today was how ordinary they looked- how normal. They look no different than the people you or I work with every day. And then, in an instant, before most of us had ever seen their faces or known their names, they were gone forever.

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