"Why do dads kill?" is the banner headline on today's Sun-Times. What the hell kind of headline is that? Even if the question was not sexist, does it belong on the front page?The question that the headline poses is valid, certainly. We should ask why either parent kills. But fathers are not the only ones, sadly, who kill children. Female parents ("moms") also kill. And a whole lot of kids are killed by the boyfriends of mothers, men who are not even the dads of the children they harm.
What was the motivation for the Sun-Times' stupid headline? Oh yes, that over-reported, tragic incident recently:
Missouri judge revokes bail for dad in family slayingBlagojevich signs extradition Christopher Vaughn, the Oswego man accused of killing his wife and three children, made his first court appearance today in a St. Louis suburb where he was arrested over the weekend.
The Sun-Times is shamelessly playing this up for sales. They are taking an already sensational murder story and blowing it out of proportion. Sick.
Does anybody recall the Sun-Times splashing a banner headline on their front page asking, "Why do moms kill?" No?
What about the recent case of a mother killing four of her children, then herself, by hanging? Did the Sun-Times miss that story?
How about the story of Cheryl Athene Miller, a San Francisco woman who was "jailed on murder charges in Mendocino County last year after she confessed to killing her four children some 40 years ago" but was released after prosecutors dropped all charges? Did the Sun-Times miss that one?
Perhaps the morons at the Sun-Times have forgotten Susan Smith, who murdered her two kids in South Carolina in October 1994.
Maybe the imbeciles at the Sun-Times just completely missed the case of Andrea Yates, a Texas woman who drowned drowned her five young children, including a 6-month-old infant, in the family's bathtub.
The feeble minded fools at the Sun-Times should read the Globe and Mail (in Canada) newspaper. The editors and writers there are in touch with reality, and late last year ran a story titled, "Mothers kill as often as fathers do." That will come as a shock to the dipshits at the Sun-Times, I suppose, but not to a lot of us. The Globe reported [emphasis mine]:
"Mother-on-child homicides are rare in Canada but far from unknown. Twenty-seven of the 37 children slain countrywide in 2004 -- 73 per cent -- were killed by their parents, and mothers were responsible for as many of the deaths as were fathers. Among those 27 victims, 13 were killed by their biological mothers, eight by their biological fathers." More...
And that's in Canada! Peaceful, utopian Canada!
This could go on and on, citing story after story, but that would be silly. The point is that fathers are certainly not the only parent that kill. Mothers do too. And the difference is so statistically insignificant, as the Globe and Mail story points out above, that the sexist, misleading, agenda-and-greed driven banner headline on today's Sun-Times is simply unforgiveable.
Don't forget the mother in Naperville IL who killed her children 2-3 years ago.
ReplyDeletefor some real insight into why the media latch on to stories like this, read al gore's "assault on reason".
ReplyDeletehint- it has absolutely nothing to do with sales of newspapers.
Interesting comment, particularly in light of your thoughtful evaluation of the newspaper management as "sexist idiot pigs."
ReplyDeleteFirstly, it's a given that the S-T tends toward flashier headlines than, say, the more reserved Trib. However, when the news was dominated a few years back by the horrific killing of children by their mothers, there were news reports on why these things happened, often centered on the subject of postpartum depression and other reasons women killed their children.
Seriously, would you have yelled that those articles were written by "idiot sexist pigs" who didn't even THINK to write all inclusive reports on why women, men, hermaphrodites and assorted barnyard animals kill children?
I appreciate you viewpoint, but I think your comments are, perhaps, as sensationalistic as the story you've criticized.
And I'm guessing your response to my post will be similar.
Dear ChicagoFriend:
ReplyDeleteYes, had the Sun-Times run a banner headline "Why do moms kill" I would have called them on it. I hope this response was not too sensational. I tried to keep any mention of hermaphrodites or barnyard animals out of it.