Jumping the Gun

In the medium of blogging, because there's no editing process or any other delay to publication, the blogger may speculate as ongoing news is being broken. The upside is that it can allow real-time commentary, like live-blogging an election or speech. The downside is that sometimes one can jump the gun and post items that, in retrospect, are completely off-base.

That was the case with my previous post (from Friday) linking the Binghamton immigration center shooting with right-wing anti-immigrant rhetoric. After posting, it became clear that the attack was the work of another immigrant, not an immigrant-hating bigot. I still stand by the general idea that it's very problematic to have mainstream candidates and media sources spewing hate against immigrants, and that this hatred does seep into unbalanced people and lead to violence. But this was not the case in this situation, and perhaps I was too quick to pin the blame for this tragedy (incorrectly) on people with whose ideologies I disagree.