Disgraceful

So, looking at the online USA Today this morning, I came across this headline: Ga. trailer 911 caller: 'My whole family is dead!'

I clicked to the story, largely because I was hoping that I was wrong about the headline - that there's some explanation for the word "trailer" being used as an adjective in that headline that does not involve where the caller lives. I was not wrong.

USA actually characterized a 9-1-1 caller as a "Ga. trailer 911 caller" because the man happens to live in a mobile home. That's just patently offensive. What difference does it make where the man lives? If he lived in a single-family detached home, would they have said, "Ga. single-family residence 911 caller?" Is there some relevance to the fact that he lives in a trailer? I mean, yes, the crime he called about happened in a trailer, in Georgia, but the story also mentions that the mobile home is located on an old plantation with moss-draped trees, and there's a boat in the front yard. Did they say, "Ga. plantation trailer with boat in yard 911 caller?"

I think the relevant information in this story is NOT that the man lives in a trailer, but that his whole family was killed. If you want to use his 9-1-1 quote as your headline for dramatic effect, then say, "Georgia 911 caller: 'My whole family is dead!'"

The "trailer" labeling is just a way of painting this guy as some kind of hillbilly and the whole situation as some sort of backwoods dueling banjos scene. The most likely scenario is that it's drug-related - the guy had drugs on him, and generally when a whole house full of people are beaten to death, you're looking at the mob or drugs or both. But drug violence can happen just as easily in an apartment in Manhattan as in a mobile home in rural Georgia, so let's dispense with the unnecessary hillbilly characterizations.

Poor journalism, USA Today. Really poor.

In the news

Part of my job is to read through hundreds of headlines each day and determine which stories would be of interest to the people my company serves. Most of the stories have nothing to do with the work we do, so I gloss right past them, but occasionally, one of the non-applicable headlines catches my eye. Today, it was this one:

"Sen. Grassley, You Can't Fix a Crap Sandwich"

I thought it must be an editorial, and upon further investigation, I found it was a blog post written by a freelance political columnist. Clearly, a newspaper had picked up the piece, since our clipping service only culls through newspapers. I didn't take the time to read the post, because I had to get back to looking through the rest of the headlines at the time. But now that I have a moment, I feel compelled to respond. So, based solely on the headline, my response/follow-up post is:

Senator Grassley, I don't know you, but I don't think you should fix a crap sandwich. It would be messy and very unpleasant, and I don't think anyone would eat it - no matter what kind of bread you used. I think you should fix something else.