You guys aren't going to like this, but I'm going to say it anyway.   Back in the olden days of the 60's/Viet Nam era,  You saw the bodies on the evening news every night.  Rice paddies with corpses, children running naked from napalm burns at photographers.  Vacant stares of America's sons as they crept through the jungle.  Dogs attacking civil rights protesters as the fire hoses blasted them from off camera.  The rage on the white faces of those who were blocking black children from their schools.  Then there was Kent State.  Breaking live on local news in the afternoon throughout northern Ohio before it went national.   We have since refrained from that type of coverage believing that it was too gruesome for general consumption.

But was it? 

That type of coverage changed hearts and minds.  What kind of reaction would you get today from a video from inside the building after a mass shooting had occurred?   Not the bodies, just the aftermath - overturned desks and blood splatter.   General mayhem and the remains of protective barriers that may or may not have kept death from the door.   Would people be horrified at the carnage, or outraged that they had been shown the video on their flat screen?  

We have been mentally sanitized and mollified into accepting horror by having the horror kept from us.  Except as entertainment - when does the next SAW movie come out?