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"We wish we could change the heinous events of Saturday," was the statement from Loughner's parents that ABC's Pierre Thomas quoted, reporting on a devastated father and a mother who is a nervous wreck. NBC Mike Taibbi was not impressed: "How could the parents of Jared Loughner have been unaware of what their only child was thinking and allegedly planning living in the same house?" Taibbi ripped into Randy and Amy Loughner, questioning their tolerance of their son's "occult shrine in the backyard with candles and a replica skull." Taibbi called Loughner "isolated in his own home and apparently propelled by demons his parents say they never saw."
The probes into Loughner's background on all three newscasts had the whiff of tabloid sensationalism. "A heavy drug user," whispered ABC's Thomas, making no attempt to establish a link between narcotics cause and violent effect, relying only on innuendo. "I know he had smoked pot. I know he had he used psilocybin mushrooms. I know he had used salvia divinorium," Loughner's friend Zachary Osler told Thomas. The upshot, Thomas reported, was "erratic" behavior. NBC's Taibbi, too, reported on marijuana and salvia. He described Loughner's behavior at Pima Community College as "wild, disturbing outbursts, nonsensical tirades some found terrifying." CBS' Ben Tracy visited the community college campus: "Loughner often laughed to himself, shook his fists and was incoherent." He called a math test, a Mayhem Fest; he denounced the college as unConstitutional. Over a period of seven month, Loughner's behavior inspired five separate calls to police.
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