Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Perhaps I'm missing something

Last Friday, the Mercury's top story was about immigration status of the driver who killed a 12-year-old bicyclist in front of her school on the last day of class.  The Merc made a self-fulfilling prophecy about the story "renewing the debate on whether undocumented people should be allowed to apply for driver's licenses."  Lo and behold, after some interviews suggested they should be, several letter writers wrote to argue the point.  Voila: debate renewed.

Appearing immediately below this story was an article about the sheriff's deputy who killed two bicyclists receiving only misdemeanor charges.  (This is not a surprise.  Given our district attorneys' track record of failing to prosecute drivers for killing bicyclists and pedestrians, the easiest way to kill somebody and get away with it is to do it from behind a steering wheel.) Nowhere did the article suggest that we should have a debate about whether sheriff's deputies should be allowed to apply for driver's licenses.  

Perhaps we should be debating whether people who kill other people with their cars be allowed to have driver's licenses.  I will start: no.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Typical NOE.

No mention of the Merc writers' blatant editorializing - nor the clear pro position on drivers licenses the writers convey. There's also thinly veiled dig on Republicans in the second to last line that adds nothing to the story.

Nemesis of Evil said...

I didn't make my point very well I guess. The only reason the writers brought up the issue of whether illegal immigrants should have driver's licenses is so they could editorialize about it. I do not think it merited a story.

As for the second to last paragraph, that seemed like a harmless transition to me, although I suppose they didn't have to refer to the opposition as "Republicans."