It’s inevitable that the horrific events of the last week, after reaching a certain denouement on Friday night, would give way to follow-up musings that look for some broader message. Or that we would hear of once implausible scenarios that are suddenly very credible because Everything Has Changed.

Local opiners did not disappoint in looking for these stories. What they came up with is another matter.

Sunday’s Boston Herald went looking for a big-picture message and turned to columnist Joe Battenfeld to carry the load:  “Loud & Proud” read the frontpage headline beneath a photo of a woman clapping with a American flag behind her.  “Battenfeld: Try and stop us from cheering” read the subheadline beneath it.  Battenfeld’s column suggesting all sorts of “PC” voices were out in force trying to stop the patriotic cheers for law enforcement officials might have been an interesting angle, but for one small detail: He produces no evidence of any dark forces of PC evil trying to stop anyone from cheering about anything.  

“The predictable PC police and political partisans are already moaning about the raw display of patriotic pride in the aftermath of the killing and capture of the two thugs who allegedly killed innocent kids and terrorized our city,” Battenfeld wrote. “The usual liberal media are out in force to lecture us about cheering too loudly, or mocking people for singing ‘We are the Champions.’”

This lecture from the anti-PC policeman proved too much for David Bernstein, the longtime political reporter for the late Phoenix newspaper.  Bernstein started tweeting at Battenfeld yesterday, challenging him to cough up some evidence of liberal media deriding patriotic cheerleaders. Battenfeld ultimately came back with a single mildly critical tweet from a guy who, far from any standing as a recognizable political partisan or membership in “the usual liberal media,” seems best described as Some Random Dude. Never let facts get in the way of a good story.

In the “surprise scenario” department, meanwhile, is Adrian Walker’s Globe column today. Walker suggests that the strong leadership shown by Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis throughout the bombing crisis makes him the guy the city needs right now….to run for mayor!

The bar to be mayor “just went way up,” writes Walker, who says most of the declared mayoral hopefuls “clearly can’t meet it.” Walker says the field “is dominated by second-tier pols who have seldom, if ever, had to make hard decisions,” with only Suffolk DA Dan Conley having run a major agency.  (He leaves out Bill Walczak, who not only ran the multimillion dollar Codman Square Health Center, but founded and built it from scratch.) Exactly what hard decisions Hyde Park district city councilor Tom Menino made or what agencies had he run before assuming the mayor’s seat in 1993 is left unsaid. Or Ray Flynn before him.  For that matter, exactly what hard decisions fell to Menino over the last week?  One can appreciate Menino’s deep concern for the city and his visible presence over the last week without conflating it with making tough high-stakes decisions under incredible pressure.

Globe columnist Joan Vennochi seems to have the thoughtful take of recent days. Her Sunday column doesn’t reduce the lessons to some simple declaration, which is, of course, why it comes far closer to capturing the real meaning and challenge of the moment. She brings the sober news that, as happened after 9/11, once we’re done with the “brief moment of rallying, during which New York Yankees fans will sing ‘Sweet Caroline,’” we’ll again be a country riven by a deep ideological divide. It’s a place, she says, where acts of violence like those a week ago in Boston or four months ago in Newtown don’t lead to a unifying sense of public purpose in any way like the way the assassinations of JFK, RFK, and Martin Luther King strengthened the national resolve to complete their commitment to civil rights or other big goals that rallied a generation.

“Perhaps it’s time for the generation that inherited this world of fear and violence to do something about changing it,” Vennochi writes. It’s hard to put that on a bumper sticker, but that’s a task  calling out for real patriotism and political leadership.

–MICHAEL JONAS

MARATHON BOMBING AFTERMATH

Muslims in the Boston area express concerns about stereotyping. The Wall Street Journal reports that as Tamerlan Tsarnaev became more religious, he engaged in arguments with worshippers at the Cambridge mosque he sometimes attended. The Globe also lays out the older Tsarnaev brother’s turn to radical Islam.

The MetroWest Daily News considers lessons from New York, as the New York Times reports that the bombers may have been planning to attack the city. Time says the big break in the bombing manhunt came when the Tsarnaev’s carjacking victim managed to escape.

Columnist and legal analyst Wendy Murphy slams those pols who exploited the tragedy and vows not to vote for anyone who gratuitously stuck his/her face in front of every camera, though she names no one.

The National Review editors look into what’s “After Boston” and declare malice cannot be reasoned with.

The FBI is coming in for increasing criticism as lawmakers begin to point fingers.

The Lowell Sun has video of the thermal imaging of the alleged bomber in the boat.

The Sun, in an editorial, calls for the death penalty for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Some prominent GOP politicians call for the government to hold Tsarnaev as an enemy combatant, not a criminal. The Globe outlines some of the legal questions the case will raise. Keller@Large had a live edition of the program yesterday and asks what everyone else is asking: What’s next in prosecution and policy?

Big Papi’s profane patriotism was just what we needed to hear, a high school teacher from South Deerfield writes for WBUR.

Charlie Pierce takes in the 8 am mass at St. Patrick’s in Watertown. A police sergeant sitting in the back rows tells Pierce: “”It’s kind of like after 9/11. Everybody likes cops again. It’s kind of weird, to tell you the truth.”

New York magazine describes the public reaction to this weekend’s manhunt as “total noise.” The magazine also takes the temperature of Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, and criticizes attempts to stuff the bombing into an ideological box: “In some sense the identity of a mass murderer ought to be irrelevant. Does it make a difference if your loved one was killed by a man who thinks God will give him 72 virgins for mowing down innocent people, or by a man who believes the Jews control the government, or by a man tormented by some other psychological demon?”

Peter Gelzinis speaks with a dance teacher who lost her foot to the bombing: “Yeah, having my foot blown off, that really sucks. But I can’t wallow in woe is me… And next year, though I’ve never been a runner, yes, I plan to run the marathon.”

Federal agents arrested two New Bedford men on “administrative immigration violations” at an apartment complex where the younger alleged bomber may have lived but Homeland Security officials were mum on any connection to the Marathon massacre.

BEACON HILL

Bloomberg reports Gov. Deval Patrick’s handling of the Marathon bombing crisis raised his political profile nationally.

MUNICIPAL MATTERS

A group opposing a slots parlor in Worcester brings together people who have been on opposing sides on most issues in the past, the Telegram & Gazette reports.

NATIONAL POLITICS/WASHINGTON

Sequester-prompted federal furloughs begin to affect air travel.

Residents rally for immigration reform in Lynn, the Item reports.

The Boy Scouts propose a semi-lifting of its ban on gays by allowing gay youths to become members but still preventing gay adults from serving as leaders. Associated Press via Chronicle of Philanthropy.

ELECTIONS

Ed Markey has a big fundraising lead in the race for US Senate. He also nabbed the Globe endorsement yesterday. Today the Globe weighs in on the Republican side, endorsing state Rep. Dan Winslow, who has been running third in polls tracking the three-way race for the GOP nomination.

The Dorchester Reporter says former Dorchester state rep and one-time top Menino housing aide Charlotte Richie will enter the race for mayor of Boston.

The national GOP abandoned former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford in his congressional bid after his Argentine fiancee started making campaign appearances with him.

BUSINESS/ECONOMY

The New York Times weighs in with a lengthy look at the debacle that was Rhode Island’s $75 million losing bet on Curt Schilling’s video game company.

EDUCATION

The principal of Southeastern Vocational Technical High School in Easton pens an oped for the Brockton Enterprise bemoaning “one size fits all” educational approaches.

HEALTH CARE

Paul Levy touts his new book about how he used his then-named Running a Hospital blog (since adding “Not” at the front) to thwart the SEIU in its bid to unionize Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

ENERGY/ENVIRONMENT

The New Bedford Standard Times sent a reporter to Europe on a “fact-finding mission” with a group of public and private leaders looking into use of wind power across the pond. She files a report from a German city that could be a template for New Bedford as a staging ground.

Today is Earth Day, lest you forget. Pope Francis I delivered an environmentalist sermon on the eve of Earth Day.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE

Lawrence Police Chief John Romero asks Mayor William Lantigua to fire a 25-year police veteran who is awaiting trial on child rape charges in Florida, the Eagle-Tribune reports. Meanwhile, the city’s state-appointed fiscal overseer criticizes Lantigua for continuing to pay indicted cops.

MEDIA

The Koch brothers make a play for the Tribune media chain.

The New York Times’s David Carr examines media coverage of the Marathon bomber manhunt.