NBC's Psycho Killer Night! (Details at 11)

No partial birth abortions for NBC. They delivered the Antichrist, alive and healthy, and now they're going oops.

They seem to want it both ways. It's almost as if they're going, "Sure we won the ratings, big-time, after we got lucky the psycho killer chose us, even with the wrong ZIP code, but now we regret any further trauma this material has caused anyone....."

The hell they do. I strongly suspect they're crying all the way to the bank with this one.

What's especially pissing is when they whine that somehow the Psycho Killer Video took on a life of its own. Now they're saying how responsible they are being by taking it out of heavy rotation (after everyone has seen it and it's old news).

What a crock.

The fact is, NBC very likely loved every minute of it. The facts are that they showed it to the cops to cover their legal ass, and when the cops said they didn't need it for evidence (since they already knew the killer was a whack job), they wallpapered the nightly news cycle with it, and then then blamed the video itself for existing.

(I have noticed that about video. You have to watch it every second, or it oozes itself off the tape or disk, and slips silently and unnoticed onto the air.)

And then there's MSNBC. This misbegotten little network has actually evolved into one of the few American news organizations that even fitfully attempts to cover both sides of Washington political issues. This is praiseworthy, but when it comes to hard news, obviously what bleeds, leads.

Oh, they had their boss on, saying something about how they considered it their public responsibility not to suppress the news. Then, since it bled, it led. All evening. Continuously. Loop job. "Here it comes again, folks, Psycho Killer Video. Is this guy crazy or WHAT??? Whoo-HOOOOO!"

What got even more bogus was when they started making shrinks watch it. They'd dial through the Rolodex and drag in various forensic psychologist types. "Shrink," they'd ask, "You are about to watch the Psycho Killer Video along with us, please get as revolted by it all as we are and then render your learned diagnosis."

Then they'd start up the loop, again. Look, there he is, the KILLER!!!! "Kill nasty gun bang bang, you people all made me do it, die kill bang bang evil kill. (Don't I look scary with my vest on?)"

"Shrink," they'd ask, "What is your diagnosis from watching this psychotic whack job ranting at his Webcam?" Shrink would answer, "You just aired a psychotic whack job ranting at his Webcam." "Thank you, Shrink."

It gets better. After MSNBC's live shows ended, the canned documentary stuff was apparently morphed into Psycho Killer Night. I don't know for sure, because I can't watch any of their overdramatized fear-twang even on a good night. ("You're going INSIDE, to see really EVIL people treated REALLY BAD in prisons!!!!!") But it's what I'm told.

Now NBC is sending the flaks out to say how sorry they are, and how long their suits agonized on this one. I'll bet they did. They probably had one whole meeting on their legal liability exposure if they ran like the wind with it. They might even have had another one on how much they should hold back for rating sweeps.

Then they went out and won their time period.

I doubt they'll ever apologize for this thing imprinting itself on the mass consciousness, not to mention the Internet, where now it can inspire the next 30 years of campus mass murderers. And the best we can do as a culture is to debate whether or not college students should be allowed to pack heat in class.

The United States just became a more dangerous country. Try though it may, NBC cannot truthfully deny their share of the blame.