January 08, 2008
We believe it at the NYT...So that makes it true.
I don't actually have a strong opinion on the death penalty itself.
But I despise utterly the thinking I encounter from "anti-death-penalty-activist" types. Of course I've only encountered some of them, there may be others I could respect. But from what I've seen, they are a scoundrelly and dishonest crowd.
This NYT editorial of yesterday is an example...
The Supreme Court hears arguments on Monday in a case about whether Kentucky’s use of a “cocktail” of injected poisons to carry out the death penalty is unconstitutional. We believe that the death penalty, no matter how it is administered, is unconstitutional and wrong. If a state does execute anyone, it must do so in a way that is humane and does not impose needless suffering. Kentucky’s method does not meet that standard...
First of all, this is flat-out dishonest, since there is no question that the death penalty is constitutional. As Matthew Hoy points out:
...Seriously, you’ve got to be a upper Manhattan liberal to read the constitution and come to the conclusion that the death penalty is unconstitutional. The Fifth Amendment clause “No person … shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law….” apparently doesn’t exist in the abridged version of the constitution found in the Times’ offices.....
But that isn't my biggest beef with these people. They write: "If a state does execute anyone, it must do so in a way that is humane and does not impose needless suffering." BUT, they are utterly indifferent to the suffering of the victims. Ice-heartedly indifferent. Did you ever notice how none of the candle-light vigil crowd ever mentions the names of the victims?
And I'm bothered even more by their utter indifference to the communities that are devastated by crime and drugs. How does the frustrated cop in gangland feel when Hollywood Leftists drool over Tookie? How do the neighbors of the victims feel? None of those self-satisfied suburban white people who go out for the candle-light vigil thingies gives a flying fuck about the poor and downtrodden. Unless they are murderers. The simple folk who are trying to get ahead and raise their children right get no support at all from the fake-Quakers and fake-Christians.
Sheri S. Tepper, whom I would consider to be somewhat stridently feminist in her writings (but she's still good, which is why I bother to read her at all) has an interestin little anecdote in one of her fantasy novels wherein a town knows that a particular man is preying on their children but never locks him up for more than a year at a time, in deep comfort, because to do otherwise would be "inhumane." The shapeshifting protagonist, upon hearing this, entraps the predator by taking the shape of the young woman he's been scoping out, kills him— and then spends the next several months luring or stealing the children of the town away so she can place them with other towns. Then she drives the townsfolk out and burns their place to the ground, telling them that they've given up being a society and don't deserve their town.
It's rather telling that this protagonist is presented as the most moral person in the series. Tepper may, in many ways, be very very liberal but she seems to understand that victims are the ones hurt, and predators should be dealt with.
Posted by: B. Durbin at January 8, 2008 08:28 PMNot only to the candle burners at the midnight vigils never mention the names of the accused, have you ever noticed how seldom the news report of an execution mention the names of the victims? A typical newspaper will mention the name of the murderer five times as often as it mentions the name of the victim, just as though the victim never had an identity. Newspapers mention the victim's job more often than they mention his name, as in "Joe Blow, 45, was executed Tuesday for the 1988 murder of a convenience store clerk."
If the reporters cared about the victims, they would at least name the victim. Better yet, mention the victim instead of the murderer, as in "The killer of John Smith, who was murdered in 1988, was executed Tuesday." But, you'll never see anything like that in the MSM because it makes the victim seem more important than the murderer.
Posted by: Jack Olson at January 9, 2008 06:02 AMAnd of course they don't mention that the killers laughed at the death-agonies of the victims.
The general rule is that they want to drain important events of the meaning. Of their moral significance.
(It's the same in reporting the Iraq Campaign, and the WoT. These are, among many other things, campaigns to bring to justice global-scale criminals. The killing or capture of an al Queda leader should be reported in the context of their hideous crimes, but usually comes off in the news as just a meaningless tit-for-tat.)
