Web is abuzz about the Discovery Channel hostage drama

Details in the deceased suspect's Internet trail is dissected throughout the blogosphere

Travis Quezon

The web is abuzz about the “Discovery Channel gunman.” In case you missed it, The Star-Advertiser highlights the fact that the suspect—James J. Lee, who Montgomery County police shot and killed after he was reported to have taken three people hostage at a Discovery Channel building in Maryland—listed his hometown as Hawaii on MySpace. In the few hours since coverage of the incident began hitting the national airwaves, Lee’s MySpace page went viral before being shut down this afternoon.

MSNBC.com’s Elizabeth Chuck reports on how the hostage situation unfolded real-time on Twitter.

The HuffPost Hill blogs about the absurdity of analyzing the politics of someone so apparently unstable—how people on either side of the political spectrum tried to tie the other to Lee:

So Is This Guy A Lefty, Or What?: Because, of course, in America it’s not enough for a guy just to be plain nuts, a debate about where on the political spectrum James Lee sits immediately broke out on the twittersphere, with lefties pointing to his anti-immigration stuff to hang a right-wing tag on him, and righties pointing to everything else he said.”

See a YouTube video from Associated Press for the straight report: