The Pittsburgh shootings elbowed the mass pipe bomber, Cesar Sayoc, out of the news cycle - but then Sayoc didn't manage to actually hurt any of the high-profile figures he targeted with his mailings. What I wonder - and what the news media has so far failed to report - is just how incompetent a bomb-maker Sayoc was. Fake news meets fake bombs.

One of the strange side effects of an epic American political hysteria is this strange ADD-like inability of the public to focus on anything for more than a few moments, even the most arresting atrocities. The hysteria itself is too compelling, like the actions of a human limbic system driving the collective public psyche from fight to flight on the wild horses of pure emotion. Reason has been discarded by the wayside just as a super-drunk person will shed his clothing even on a freezing night.