A lament:

We no longer have news. We have springboards for commentary. We have cues for Tweets.

Something happens, and before the facts are even settled, the morals are deduced and the lessons drawn. The story is absorbed into agendas. Everyone has a preferred take on it, a particular use for it. And as one person after another posits its real significance, the discussion travels so far from what set it in motion that the truth — the knowable, verifiable truth — is left in the dust.

The writer, Frank Bruni, is himself paid to produce opinions about the news (as he says right off the bat). Still, it's worth considering why, as he puts it, "grandstanding is booming."