MARK STEYN: Spirits of the Age.
So that’s how it was initially reported. As the characteristically somnolent monodaily’s original headline put it:
Retired police chief killed in bike crash remembered for laugh, love of coffee
Must have been a pretty bad “crash”, huh? But just one of those things, compounded at the hospital by the usual bureaucratic heartlessness of modern life.
And then this video emerged:
Las Vegas teens steal a car hit and run another car and hit a man on a bike for fun pic.twitter.com/ExnChHCioY
— Ghost Browser (@ghostbrowser8) September 15, 2023
So two joyriders steal a car, hit another vehicle, and then decide to kill a bicyclist for kicks. “Ready?” says the driver. “Hit his ass,” responds the passenger. And they do – and whaddayaknow, killing a guy makes for a really cool video when you post it on “social” media!
By the way, that lousy “bike crash” headline remained on the Review-Journal story for a month – from the initial publication on August 18th all the way till Saturday September 16th, after twenty-four hours of widespread derision on the Internet. The paper has become defensive about its coverage, which we’ll return to later.
Read the whole thing.