The Dead Amish Girls

Australian media has covered the killing of the five (so far) Amish girls pretty heavily. Not surprising -- the US generally gets a lot of time on the news and in the papers here, school shootings are always news, and the quaint, exotic nature of the Amish just adds to the newsworthiness of the story. Oh, and it also brings again that international stereotype about America to the fore -- the ready availability of guns and the violence of American society.

It was an odd juxtoposition, watching the evening news, to see some of the poor girls buried, the grieving Amish wearing their old-fashioned clothes, the bodies of the girls riding in horse-drawn carts -- and the whole scene being filmed from a helicopter.