A car may have plowed into a crowd on Bourbon Street early on Wednesday, the New Orleans Police Department reported, according to ABC News affiliate WGNO.
10 dead, 30 injured after car intentionally plows into crowds in New Orleans
Yet another fucking exculpatory headline minimizing the agency of the assailant because his weapon of choice happened to be a car. No, headline writer, the car didn’t do a goddamn thing; its driver did. Even putting “intentionally” in there, while better than nothing, still fails to make up for using the wrong subject!
Better version:
10 dead, 30 injured after assailant intentionally rams car into crowd in New Orleans
This is basically the same type of shit as minimizing police responsibility with headlines like “bystander struck by bullet during officer-involved shooting” (as opposed to “police officer shoots bystander”), and just as systematic and egregious. The only difference is that it’s done in service of car-supremacy rather than the abusive police state. I am really sick and tired of it, in both contexts.
Yet another fucking exculpatory headline minimizing the agency of the assailant because his weapon of choice happened to be a car. No, headline writer, the car didn’t do a goddamn thing; its driver did. Even putting “intentionally” in there, while better than nothing, still fails to make up for using the wrong subject!
Better version:
This is basically the same type of shit as minimizing police responsibility with headlines like “bystander struck by bullet during officer-involved shooting” (as opposed to “police officer shoots bystander”), and just as systematic and egregious. The only difference is that it’s done in service of car-supremacy rather than the abusive police state. I am really sick and tired of it, in both contexts.
After ramming the crowd, the killer got out and opened fire.
This was an intentional attack.
The key point is that that intention needs to be ascribed to the person, not the inanimate object.
I wasn’t arguing against that. I was giving missing context
Media literacy FTW
This is how propaganda does the heavy lifting, folks, not with spotlights and posters, but grammatical sleight of mind.