Posted on 06/18/2005 5:13:52 AM PDT by Sam's Army
The payouts, or payoffs, to the WTC families bothered me less after I realized it was the Feds way of covering their butts for their multi-decade incompetence in defending our shores. Endless civil actions would have shut down commercial air travel and, more importantly from a bureaucratic perspective, have tested the government's constitutionally protected right to negligence; i.e. sovereign immunity. Rather than blame those who accepted the checks we should focus on those who made them necessary.
I think it's the "man bites dog" aspect of a story that gets attention. Poor people in poor neighborhoods being victims of crime, is the norm. But a relatively wealthy person in a supposedly safe neighborhood being victimized, is a rarity.
Being attractive helps (let's face it, most top movie stars aren't ugly). And having an articulate spokesman is a must. If you see a guy who looks and sounds like you, talking about how his wife or kid was kidnapped, you're going to start thinking, "Hey, that could happen to me." By the same token and as unfair as it might be, if the relative of the victim looks and sounds like he himself could be a criminal, they're not going to engender much sympathy.
"It is like a sports team coach saying, 'My team got their a**es kicked because of poor coaching...hey I'm the coach!'"
Perfectly stated. I think Vince Lombardi said that once. NOT! :)
Locally, a retarded kid wandered away from a group visiting local beaches. Police response: whaddaya want us to do about it? Cripes...the Coast Guard is constantly flying that area, you could call the local Sheriff's Posse, or you could put down yer freakin' doughnut and take a walk. A friend of mine was walking his dog in the area and found the kid...the next morning. Alive, at the base of a cliff. Still waiting to hear a peep about it in the local media.
Hard to believe someone this stupid writes for a real newspaper.
Terrible writing displaying the kind of superficial thinking done in a fresman communciations course designed to get an A from the socialist professor.
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