No Bias
Written on December 8, 2005
I normally try not to get too worked up by the Express-News, but today I’ll make an exception. Here’s a few choice pieces from today’s edition.
Lead story, page one:
Air marshals kill traveler
Notice the headline doesn’t say “Air marshals defend 200+ innocent people” or “Air marshals kill crazed madman”.
The inside headline for this story, page 9A:
Marshals gun down man who fled jetliner
Yes, they shot the man in the back as he tried to simply disembark the aircraft. Sigh
Best part:
Inside, traveler John McAlhany said passengers were ordered to crouch under their seats.
He said that when he tried to pop up for a look, a flight attendant ordered him to get back down.
He said the man apparently left a backpack on the plane, adding that the other passengers were treated roughly when law enforcement officers boarded the plane after the shooting.
“They put a gun to the back of my head and said, ‘Put your hands on the seat,’ ” McAlhaney said. “That was more scary than anything else.”
Next, we have Maria Anglin, whose op-ed column Saving Tookie isn’t as noble as glitterati want it to be starts out reasonable enough:
Note to Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, Jamie Foxx, Jesse Jackson, Snoop Dogg and anyone else trying to “Save Tookie”: Save your breath.
And save your calls for clemency for less famous inmates who might have been wrongly convicted — although after the performance you guys have been putting on in the weeks leading up to the execution date of Stanley “Tookie” Williams, it’s going to be hard to take you seriously.
After all, you’re defending a guy sentenced for killing an overnight convenience store clerk in a robbery by — according to the testimony that put him behind bars — shooting him in the back while he was on his knees. (I know, the guys testifying against him were lying, right?)
Wow, this is surprising. A murderer deserves the death penalty. But wait — she won’t let us down!
The particulars of capital punishment are morally huge and heart-wrenching. Putting someone to death systematically might be legal, but it seems so archaic and creepy and deeply wrong. Hasn’t this nation figured out this moral dilemma?
We haven’t, in the same way many of us haven’t evolved past shooting someone in the back with a shotgun for a few bucks.
Ah, yes. Capital punishment is the moral equivalent of cold-blooded murder, because both result in the death of a human being. It all makes so much sense now. Thank you, Maria, for clearing up that tough moral quandary for me. Without you, I’d be lost.
And finally, also on page 9A, an essay by David Hinckley of the New York Daily News: 25 years of silence
With the exception of 9-11, it’s arguable that no trauma of modern times sent a bigger chill across the city than the murder of Lennon on Dec. 8, 1980.
The murder of a drug- and sex-crazed rock star is just as bad as the murder of 3,000 Americans by Islamofascist thugs. I think that says it all.
Filed in: Culture.