Hello and welcome to Tuesday, May 19, 2026. Today is National May Ray Day: time to go out and catch some rays. It’s National Devil’s Food Cake Day, also National Roadie Day, dedicated to the unsung heroes of live music. It’s also National Plant Something Day, a springtime activity.
1182: Consecration of the high altar of Paris Cathedral Notre Dame.
1780: At about midday, near-total darkness descends on New England, now known to be caused by forest fires in Canada.
1883: William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody opens Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show in Omaha, Neb.
1884: Ringling Brothers circus premieres in Baraboo, Wis.
1885: First mass production of shoes by Jan Matzeliger’s Consolidated Lasting Machine Company in Lynn, Mass.
1921: Congress sharply curbs immigration, setting a national quota system.
1926: Radio Corporation of America (RCA) founds National Broadcasting Company (NBC).
1958: Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific soundtrack album goes #1 and stays there for 31 weeks.
1960: Alan Freed and eight other radio DJs accused of taking radio payola (bribes from record companies).
1977: Smokey and the Bandit, starring Burt Reynolds, Sally Field, and Jackie Gleason, premieres.
Birthdays today include: Johns Hopkins, financier and philanthropist (founded Johns Hopkins Hospital and Johns Hopkins University); Ho Chi Minh, Vietnamese communist revolutionary and President of North Vietnam; Malcolm X, human rights activist and Muslim minister; Pol Pot, Cambodian dictator (1976-79), revolutionary who led the Khmer Rouge (1963-97) and perpetrator of the Cambodian genocide; Gary Kildall, computer scientist and entrepreneur who created the CP/M operating system; Pete Townshend of The Who; André the Giant, pro wrestler; Jerry Hyman, rock trombonist (Blood Sweat & Tears, 1968-70); Grace Jones, Jamaican-American singer (“Slave to the Rhythm”) and actress (A View To A Kill); Tom Scott, session and jazz-fusion saxophonist and composer (L.A. Express, The Blues Brothers, Paul McCartney – “Listen to What the Man Said,” and Carole King’s “Jazzman”); “Dusty” Hill, rock bassist and songwriter (ZZ Top – “Cheap Sunglasses”; “Legs”); Joey Ramone of the Ramones; and Phil Rudd, drummer for AC/DC.
If today’s your birthday, best wishes to you.
* * *
Maybe it’s too early to comment on the San Diego shootings, at least in a definitive sense. The facts weren’t all in yet when I wrote this, though I expect some added info will be on the wires by the time you read it. So this piece may already be out of date when I hit the button to send it to the editors. It’s one reason I tend to shy away from writing on current, flowing events. I note that none of my co-writers here at PJ Media have opened up on this topic yet. OK, yes, Sarah Anderson did a blurb on the subject as it developed, and Lord bless her for it, but nobody’s opined in any degree. Honestly, I can’t blame them.
In this case, however, I find myself annoyed and questioning why we have so little to go on. Annoyed enough, in fact, to open my word processor to say something about it.
Oh, there are a few snippets of info here and there, but frankly, these answer none of the basic questions such events always raise. The shooters are a near-total mystery. We know their names and ages.
Anti-Islamic hate has surfaced as a possible motive; I’m not buying it just yet. Yes, that may have been the proverbial flag they were waving, but, sorry, there is not enough evidence in the public eye to justify calling that the sole motive. What was underneath? There’s always an underlying reason.
How many times have we seen the second shoe drop, and the underlying reasons turn out to be that the shooters were transsexual and/or on antidepressants, and so on? We know one was a wrestler. Were performance-enhancing drugs involved? Those are known to twist minds, too. Has anyone even asked those questions? If so, there has been no public mention of it.
We know, for example, that one alleged shooter, Cain Clark, attended high school virtually but was set to graduate later this month, according to a school district official. Why virtually? What exactly does that distinction entail? Was he an advanced student, or was there some other reason he wasn’t in school on a daily basis? Is this a case of social isolation? We’re told one of the suspects left his mother a note, but no details about that note have been mentioned as of this writing. None I’ve seen, at least.
In my view, this is a catastrophic failure of what used to be called news gathering. We know almost nothing about these two people. If anyone in the news business is trying to build a profile on them, they’ve produced nothing useful — and given the hints so far, they’ve possibly produced something worse than useless. Why these two became mass murderers, and why they did it together, remains completely unexplained.
This bothers me for several reasons. Think back to any mass shooting over the last few years. Within hours, we had mountains of background on the shooters — every time. But alas, not here.
That background matters. It tells us what created these people and what red flags everyone missed, what led to these events. It gives us a category to work within. We have none of that. Excuse my skepticism, but when details disappear this completely, it’s because those details damage someone’s narrative. We’ve seen this pattern of protection before. It’s well established.
Back in 2018 at National Review, Karol Markowicz wrote following about the shootings at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh:
With the shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, the message from the Left is that it’s President Trump’s rhetoric that is to blame. While Trump indeed uses irresponsible language and inflames the country’s division with his words, blaming him for a crazed shooter is one step too far.
As James Robbins pointed out in his column in USA Today, the shooter actually believed Trump was part of the Jewish conspiracy he imagines controls America. “Bowers was explicit in his dislike of the president, saying he did not vote for him and had never ‘owned, worn or even touched‘ a (Make America Great Again) hat.” Challenging the media narrative that President Trump praised Nazi demonstrators in Charlottesville in 2017, Bowers agreed with another extremist that the president had “betrayed” right-wing radical protesters by “comparing them with a violent mob.”
That he hated Trump is irrelevant to the accusers harping about Trump’s rhetoric. Trump is still to blame.
After a few more examples along those same lines, Markowicz goes on to suggest:
After the shooting in Las Vegas last year, Jimmy Kimmel first blamed Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell and House speaker Paul Ryan for the shooting and said “they should be praying for God to forgive them for letting the gun lobby run this country.”
But he didn’t stop at just blaming politicians. The very next night on his show he said that Republicans know “in their hearts” that they bear some responsibility for the massacre because of their Second Amendment support. Just a late-night talk-show host ever so casually blaming half the country for the murder of 58 people.
The message is always: You’re not part of this. We’re upset and we’re angry. You don’t have a right to be.
In this present case, people are already lining up behind whatever scrap of information (or too often, misinformation) suits them, twisting it to fit the narrative they walked in with. That, too, has been the pattern in these things, as a rule.
For my part, I’m not calling motivations out just yet — we have far too little to go on. That’s a red flag, to me. That’s as far as I’m going until I see more.
Thought for the day: “The acceleration of collectivism’s advance is not the march of winners, but the blind stampede of losers.” — Ayn Rand
Thanks for being here. As always, VIP members, hit that heart on the lower left, and let’s hear your thoughts in the comments. Your involvement makes a difference. I’ll see you tomorrow.
Exclusively for our VIPs: Journalism vs. News
Editor’s Note: Do you enjoy PJ Media’s conservative reporting that takes on the radical left and woke media? Support our work so that we can continue to bring you the truth.
Join PJ Media VIP and use promo code FIGHT to receive 60% off your membership.
