Many of them mention that ubiquitous photo of Dzhokhar with his hair tousled and too few hairs on his chin to shave. Some bring up the prom photo with the red carnation or the goofy video of him wrestling with his friends.* Some mention the “I love you, bro” tweets from his many friends. Some just seem anguished by the vision of that “poor kid” alone in the boat by himself, bleeding for all those hours. All of this sympathy stems of course from the storyline that coalesced early: a hapless genial pothead being coerced into killing by his sadistic older brother. As with such storylines, all evidence to the contrary gets suppressed.

Probably the correct moral response to this misplaced maternal sympathy is the one my Slate colleague had, which is to say: “People, please. Cut that shit out. He’s an adult and a mass-murderer.” There is evidence that he was not just a pot smoker but a dealer, and also like his brother, he was a fan of jihad. Also the photos of him at the actual bombing site are not so heartwarming, as they show him surveying the crowd he is about to blow up. After all, I don’t recall any grown-ups I know feeling sorry for Lee Boyd Malvo, the teenage half of the D.C. sniper duo, or Dylan Klebold, the weak half of the Columbine killers.

Maybe the lesson is that just like teenage ardor, unleashed maternal sympathy is a powerful force that can land in strange places. Maybe if we had learned more about the 8-year-old who got killed in the bombings it would have found a more appropriate target.