It might not have been what it looked like.
That, at least, was the message you’d have heard had you turned to Tucker Carlson of Fox “News” for perspective after the recent massacre at Club Q in Colorado Springs. Club Q is a nightspot that had been known as a gathering place for the LGBTQ community, their oasis in a conservative (read: hostile) town where sexual diversity is scorned and unwelcome. Henceforward, it will also be known for bloodshed and sorrow, for the killings of five people by what has become a defining American archetype: a disaffected loser with a military-style rifle.
Before the attack was over, before he was subdued by a former soldier and a drag queen, the attacker — you won’t read his name here — managed to kill five people, identified by local police as: Raymond Green Vance; Kelly Loving; Daniel Aston; Derrick Rump and Ashley Paugh. In the first hours after it happened, authorities said it was being investigated as a possible hate crime. The club’s owner said he thought it was a hate crime. Mayor John Suthers told The New York Times it “has all the appearances of being a hate crime.”
Yet when he took to the air last Monday night, Carlson insisted it might not have been what it gave every appearance of being. “The truth is, we don’t know,” he said of a possible motive. He went on to add that “guessing” would be “dishonest and irresponsible” because it would “dishonor the memories” of the dead. “These were human beings,” he insisted. “They were not props in a larger ideological war.”