The story of the Waukesha massacre appears to have gone to the same media destination as the ongoing crisis of abandoned Americans in Afghanistan. Perhaps we can call it the Island of Misfit Narratives. The New York Post — and the people of Waukesha — certainly get that impression, after watching the national media lose interest in the attack on a Christmas parade after the arrest of an inconvenient perpetrator:

Screenshots of Brooks’ Facebook page, under his MathBoi Fly rapper handle, were mysteriously deleted right after the parade murders, and showed that he had praised Hitler, backed Black Lives Matter — and called for violence against white people.

“So when we start bakk knokkin white people TF out ion wanna hear it…the old white ppl 2, KNOKK DEM TF OUT!! PERIOD,” he wrote under his rap name, MathBoi Fly, along with a middle-finger emoji.

Brooks’ case has become a cause célèbre — not in the mainstream media, which was slammed for initially saying the deadly attack was caused by “a car” that drove into the parade, but by an increasing chorus of influential podcasters like Joe Rogan and online pundits who claim Brooks and his victims in Waukesha have been “swept under the carpet” by the press because the case doesn’t fit their agenda.

Some people in Waukesha wonder why the national media suddenly can’t find Wisconsin on a map. Wonder isn’t quite the correct word, actually:

“We’ve got six people dead and teenagers so badly injured they will have to learn to walk again — at Christmas,” state Rep. Cindi Duchow, a Waukesha resident and a Republican, told The Post.

Said Duchow: “Because this was a black guy who did it, the media doesn’t want to cover it. They were all over the Rittenhouse case because that kid was white. Race doesn’t matter to us here, but the media makes everything about race.”

That certainly may be a big part of the narrative-driven editorial decisions to exile Waukesha to the island, but it’s not the only part. The Rittenhouse case also fed into media narratives about vigilantism, gun ownership, “mostly peaceful demonstrations,” and so on — all of which were false, of course. But narrative journalism isn’t about truth; it’s about causes, which is what leads to the embrace of “fake but accurate” as an editorial principle.

Of course, Brooks’ attack could also be about vigilantism and race, but if that’s what drove Brooks to massacre people at a Christmas parade, then it’s even more inconvenient for the national media’s preferred narratives. From their perspective, it’s better to treat Brooks as a local story, a la Kermit Gosnell, rather than risk damaging their woke priorities.

Interestingly enough, the Biden White House might complicate that effort:

The growing outcry may be why it was announced Saturday that first lady Jill Biden and second gentleman Doug Emhoff will visit Waukesha on Wednesday. Though bordering ultra-Democratic Milwaukee County, Waukesha County is a Republican stronghold.

That will force the press to cover the Waukesha attack again, but don’t expect it to dominate their coverage, either. It’ll blip back up as a human-interest story about the human costs of the attack but won’t delve into any of its implications in any depth — especially the role that bail reform played in allowing Brooks to be out of custody at the time of the attack. And unlike the mainstream media’s Rittenhouse coverage, these same outlets will veer far from any attempt to tie Brooks to radical politics or race grievances, true or false.

Waukesha’s reprieve from the Island of Misfit Narratives will be brief indeed.