The Color of Killing: PC and the snipers.

If you plug the phrase "angry white male" into Google, you get about 247,000 results, which isn't really all that many when you consider how many white males get their phone service from Verizon.

The assorted profilers and pundits who so confidently fingered the Angry White Male during last month's sniper manhunt should be forgiven their bone stupidity. Here they were, all dressed up in their new camera-friendly clothes, brushing the green-room doughnut crumbs off their tie, when the host turns to them and puts on the serious-host face and asks, "Who are we looking for here?"

I mean, who knew? You're a profiler, right? So profile. There could be a book deal in this whole thing (Profiles in Madness or Is Your Neighbor an Angry Killer About to Explode?), so don't blow it. Play the odds. Who is it most likely to be? Which personality type is riddled with rage and crushed by feelings of impotence? Quick: How many Verizon customers are there?

And the media professionals -- your New York Times reporters and your network anchors -- can't really be blamed, either. They'll plug "Male comma Angry White" into any available "Who Did This Bad Thing?" box. Sprinkle gunplay on the top, stir in the fact that the guy is a pretty good shot to boot, heat and serve: We're looking, they said, for a crazy, furious, white gun nut from one of the red states.

And then the cops. During what must have been one of the largest manhunts in the nation's history, John Muhammad and Lee Malvo were stopped at least three times for traffic-related violations. At least three times! I know, I know: They were looking for a white van and a white man. They were looking for a "regular guy," according to the profilers. "A guy who probably has a job and a house and a vaguely unsatisfactory sex life," they asserted confidently. (To which I tug nervously at my collar and ask in a squeaky voice, "Just how unsatisfactory are we talking about, here?")

But still. Didn't the officers notice something odd about the duo? Didn't they think it was strange that these two men were sleeping in their car? You mean to tell me that the boy, Lee Malvo, wasn't just a titch nervous, that his eyes didn't dart around? Didn't they notice anything? Didn't they hear the spooky music in the background?

Whoops. I guess I'm already watching the movie version. You can always tell who the bad guy is in movies, because whenever he appears -- and it's always a he -- they play weird, spooky, psycho-killer music. "That must be him," you whisper to your movie-going companion, "because, boy, that's some spooky music." "Shhhhh!" says the angry white person behind you, noting one more irritant in his already itchy life that he'll bring up with his friends in one of those gun-nut chat rooms.