ah, so being told how to feel via rightwing media, in the moment, does matter much more than facts.

No. It just means that if you start cracking jokes about what much of the country feels is a monumental shock to the system, you're going to come off looking like a monstrous a-hole to much of the country.

What a lot of progressives appear to be missing is that this is, in fact, viewed by those folks as a cataclysmic event akin to the Floyd/Trayvon Martin/Eric Garner murders. That regardless of whether Charlie Kirk as a person someone they esteem or despise, the murder of that person itself is a monumental shock. That progressive-coded folks in "normie" institutions (ABC, the Washington Post) are completely ignorant of - or indifferent to - that fact is really distasteful to them. Again, just like cracking some George Floyd jokes a few days after his awful murder would go down with much of the country.

It's a failure to read the room - or even know what room you're in. If you're writing columns for Jacobin, you don't have to worry about any of this. If you're writing for the WaPo or in the writer's room for Jimmy Kimmel Live, though, you're in much more of a "normie" space. And you probably need to be a lot more aware of the fact that a lot of "normie" folks are conservative-leaning and are not okay with this being treated with humor just yet. It's cliche, but it's definitely "too soon."