Capital Gazette survivors work from the back of a pickup truck, their makeshift office, to get out Friday's paper. Getty Images

On Friday, Americans grieved yet more senseless gun carnage, distraught residents of Annapolis held yet more candlelight vigils, police investigated yet another disturbed misogynist wielding deadly firepower, and the heroic - yeah, we're gonna use that word - surviving journalists at the Capital Gazette proved true to their staunch word that "we're putting out a damn paper" the day after the murder of five of their colleagues, for some, before their eyes, in America's 154th mass shooting of 2018. Killed were Gerald Fischman, 61; Rob Hiaasen, 59; John McNamara, 56; Wendi Winters, 65; and Rebecca Smith, 34.

After months of loose vile talk of killing reporters, it's little wonder one devastated survivor of the newsroom shootings angrily dismissed the banal condolences spewed by an incendiary Trump who's repeatedly branded a free press, that cornerstone of democracy, "enemies of the people." “I don’t know what I want right now but I’m going to need more than a couple days of news coverage and thoughts and prayers,” reporter Selene San Felice told CNN. “Thanks for your prayers, but I couldn’t give a fuck about them if there’s nothing else.”

Enter Marco 'I Am A Spineless NRA Toady to the Obscene Tune of $3 Million' Rubio into the current civility fray. He took to social media to denounce, not dead journalists or students or black men, or toddlers in cages or Nazis in the White House or Putin behind them or trade wars or economic inequality or ecological ruination or unending corruption or the fraying of our cherished social contract, but profanity. "Sign of our times," he whined. "The F word is now routinely used in news stories, tweets etc It’s not even F*** anymore. Who made that decision???"

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Huh. Good question. A clear, prompt response came from David Simon, creator of The Wire and former reporter with the Baltimore Sun who had friends among the victims; after the violent rhetoric of the past few months, he suggested, Rubio should "crawl through broken glass to Hell." Interestingly, Simon's turned out to be one of the more mild replies amidst a furious flood best summed up by the succinct "Go fuck yourself" and "Shut the fuck up." Between Rubio's cowardly, twisted priorities and Trump's thuggish, stunning hypocrisy - the pussy-grabbing and calls for assault and observations that "the haters and losers...cannot help the fact that they were born fucked up!" - Twitter exploded.

"Fuck if I know," began one fiery rejoinder to the question from "Senator Dickless." "I mean what the fuck could possibly be going on that would want to make normally polite people want to say the word fuck. Can’t fucking imagine. It’s a fucking mystery." "There are nearly 2000 fucking kids who were taken from their fucking parents by the fucking government that you fucking work for," noted another. "And you’re going to make a fucking word the fucking thing you make noise about? Are you fucking serious?"

For many, one Max Sparber won the internet with his thoughtful inquiry into Rubio's question. "I know," he wrote. "It was just wild when I started seeing the media use the word pussy without bleeping it or anything. God, how did that even happen? Somebody must have said it in such a blunt, unavoidable way that the media had to report it in full, but who could that have been?" Then: "Really racking my brain here. Must have been somebody really crude but also someone who had been catapulted into a position of extreme power." Finally: "On an unrelated note, I really like this photo of you."