The Death Penalty and the numbers game

Last week, I noted an article which attacked the race card being applied to the death penalty. Today, Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe addresses the silliness of the media playing up the 1,000th person executed since the death penalty was restored in 1976.

What is it that makes victims so easy to forget? When Kenneth Boyd was executed in North Carolina last week, it was reported everywhere that he was the 1,000th murderer to be put to death since the resumption of capital punishment in 1976. But how many stories devoted more than a passing mention to the two people Boyd sent to early graves -- his estranged wife, Julie Curry Boyd, and her father, Thomas Curry? Why doesn't the media's round-number fetish extend to the victims of homicide as well as the perpetrators? If the 1,000th execution made headlines, why didn't the 1,000th murder? Or the 10,000th? Or the 100,000th?

Actually there have been close to 600,000 homicides in the United States since 1976, and the total climbs by roughly 15,000 each year. Where is the uproar over those round numbers? Where are the protests, the petitions, the Hollywood rallies aimed at stopping those deaths? I understand that some people think capital punishment is wrong as a matter of principle. What I cannot understand is how anyone can be more outraged by the lawful execution each year of a few dozen murderers than by the annual slaughter of thousands of victims at the hands of such murderers.

Jacoby as usual is right on the mark. The media resorts to tricks like highlighting a made up milestone when they know there point of view can't stand on its own. Just like when the Democrats and their accomplices in the media made a big deal about the 2,000th soldier to die in Iraq in order to attack the current administration's policies in the War on Terror. The 2,000th soldier's death was a tragedy but no more so than the 827th or any other. Do we do highlight the 2,000th traffic death each year? No, because the Media-crats haven't yet decided to attack the Bush administration over the 40 some thousand people who die in car accidents each year.