From WNYC in New York, this is on the media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

And I'm Bob Garfield. On Thursday, President Obama met with relatives of those killed at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando last Sunday.

Repreasing, as an L.A. Times headline put it, his role as Comforter in Chief after a mass shooting for the 14th time in his presidency.

So today, once again, as has been true too many times before, I held and hugged grieving family members and parents,

and they asked, why does this keep happening?

And they pleaded that we do more to stop the carnage.

They don't care about the politics.

Neither do I.

Nevertheless, soon after the news from Orlando broke, the massacre was almost entirely

about politics, a vehicle for numerous agendas, with the media acting as a prism, refracting

the event into competing narratives, all vying for attention. This person is a homophobic terrorist,

wherever else he is.

The lawmakers are pointing to the Orlando shooting as a reason to close what they call

loopholes in California gun laws.

This is not a gun control issue.

This is a terrorism issue.

Terrorism, guns, LGBT rights, fraud issues in American politics, brought together by a tragedy of unusual complexity,

manifest in the seemingly contradictory identity of the shooter.

Investigators believe Omar Mateen was radicalized in recent years.

While his father says the shootings had nothing to do with religion.

Several witnesses also say they chatted with the killer on gay dating apps like Reinder and Jack.

The question of how exactly Mateen related to the LGBT community has shown a bright light

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