Rodent Regatta

There comes a point in the reporting of deaths where all reason is lost. In America we value all life. A single life is exceeds our ”acceptable loss” meter.

The mass media, on the other hand, takes stories like ”the flu epidemic,” soldiers killed in Iraq, plane crashes and mad cows and completely distorts our views of what really happened. In a single temblor of about a minute’s duration, Iran has lost 20,000 (or more) of its citizens. That’s in a country with around 68 million people.

In this country, I believe we should index all reports of death to the most recent year’s deaths in automobile accidents. Why? We launch investigations when mad cows or natural disasters kill people. Yet, year after year, we go on driving like we’re invincible. Over 40,000 people die each year in fatal automobile accidents in a country with 290 million people. Yet, when an airplane crash kills 87 we get dawn to dusk media coverage.