We don’t ask much from our journalists these days, but even by contemporary low standards, ABC’s Brian Ross should have been suspended for his misidentification of a James Holmes (one of many in the Aurora area) as a possible mass murderer suspect on the basis of no other evidence than a similar name and apparently a tea-party identification. It’s as if the journalistic ethos prompts one to hear the name of a shooting suspect, then google it with “tea party” to find a match, and, presto, to go on the air to sort of, kind of float the possibility that some deranged conservative activist was the killer — all in a climate where there is very bad history of trying instantaneously to politically massage the horror and tragedy of rampage killings. Ross’s unprofessionalism in turning our attention to the wrong James Holmes at a time of national crisis reminds us of the similar mob-like pursuit of Shakespeare’s Cinna the Poet, who in Julius Caesar likewise shared an unfortunate name:
First Citizen
Tear him to pieces; he’s a conspirator.
CINNA THE POET
I am Cinna the poet, I am Cinna the poet.
Fourth Citizen
Tear him for his bad verses, tear him for his bad verses.
CINNA THE POET
I am not Cinna the conspirator.
Fourth Citizen
It is no matter, his name’s Cinna; pluck but his
name out of his heart, and turn him going.