Friday, April 25, 2008

kind of in total disbelief.


Things seem to pile up in pairs (I know they're supposed to come in "threes" but...).
I've just attended my first burial and something about it...mourning death is sad in general, but the physical act of burying someone is really frightening. Watching the remains of someone be taken away from you physically was much more symbolic than I had granted. But it's cathartic too. Like waving bye to someone in a train slowly accelerating from the platform.

And though on a totally different note, but still in light of how we honor the dead - news of Sean Bell's killers' aquittal is simply, BRAIN boggling.

This is as good an opportunity as any for me to re-recommend The Death Penalty in America. It's written by someone who is anti-capital punishment, but the book is pretty unbiased since it's mostly statistics. The most amazing data point he makes is that a large percentage of capital convictions are made on the murders of white women, though a disproportionate number of actual murders are committed against black men.

How do we value life?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

My wife and I heard this verdict and almost burst into tears.

Question: If this wasn't racially motivated, when was the last time you heard of an unarmed white man getting fifty or more rounds pumped into him?

Not the most logically sound argument out there, but this is just unforgivable.

ill iterate said...

seriously, but then the media turns around and doesn't even blink when it complains about the popularity of Reverend Wright when he calls the US on its foibles.

Anonymous said...

Have you ever noticed in TV crime series or any movie that "the little blond girl" will always be saved in the nick of time? Try it. 100% reliable.

As for Reverent Wright--it's obvious that they were unable to come up with any living breathing Obama relatives to trash... What else does the opposition have to use? They've already gone pro-guns, and once that card is played there's not a whole lot left to offer.