CNN Isn't Real Life.

I wish I could frame something coherent, and thoughtful, and sympathetic around what those poor kids at Virginia Tech experienced this week. I can't.

I was a college kid in an era where we thought everything was happening for the first time, and that we were on the edge of anarchy and mayhem. A stinking rotten war a half world away, violence at Altamont, kids shot by National Guardsmen at Kent State, a bloody riot at the Chicago convention -- all these felt so dangerous, so horrible, so on the edge of death and forever.

But what most of us were exposed to was not at the level of what these poor kids experienced -- and there was significant distance from the violence.

Believe me, it was a hard, bad time. There were plenty of kids killed in the jungle, at the raceway, on the grass in Ohio and in the streets of Chicago.

But we didn't live it, and relive it, and watch it over and over, and pull it up on our computer screens and drown in it in the immediacy of 24/7 coverage the way we are now.

And it makes me sadder than I can express that we now have such intimate familiarity with a mad killer who managed to slaughter 32 of his peers.

I am so sorry. And so sickened by what life can be. And I need to remember this reality isn't the only reality there is.

CNN is not real life. I just can't accept that we're seeing is a truthful representation of life, our life, this American life.

I hope we find a way to somehow understand this kid, his miserable existence and the damage his pain caused him to cause.