A barrage of criticism came on social media (where else?) about my decision to publish a photo of the fatal April 4 crash that took the life of a 24-year-old woman.
The photo showed a downed motorcycle and the covered body of its rider lying in the lanes of Highway 99.
Newspapers are in the business of reporting what is happening in our communities – the good and the bad. Journalists are not heartless people; we don’t enjoy reporting about people getting killed in traffic crashes. I choked up driving away from the scene, feeling the sorrow of a person dying minutes before and feeling for the family that would be receiving really horrible news. I have four children myself and that’s always a parent’s greatest fear – your own flesh and blood will die before you.
More than one person used the word “disgusting” at us running the photo. More than one asked, “How would you feel if that was your relative?” Well, I would be so devastated to lose any family member in a car crash, that a newspaper photo of a crash scene involving said relative would not be something I would even search for.
One suggested I should be sued, which tells you what you need to know about folks’ understanding of the First Amendment.
Another individual named Jose Agredano wrote: “Let’s all report the image and the Ceres news paper page.” Report us? To who?
One person even emailed us a photo shot by another group, 209 Times demanding that I remove that photo from social media. I can see why people think 209 Times is ours since we have the 209 Magazine and the Studio 209 YouTube channel but 209 Times is somebody else’s baby.
It’s not surprising that people want to take their grief out on us and I’m sure a fair bit of it came from the snowflakes who are “triggered” by things they don’t like. But life dispenses a lot of uncomfortable realities which shouldn’t be ignored for the lessons they offer.
We’re not the only newspaper to take public barbs for publishing photos of crashes but compared to what was routinely published in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, my photo was tame and certainly couldn’t be defined as gruesome by any experienced journalist. It wasn’t a graphic image; the body was covered.
Decades ago the Modesto Bee caught flak for running a photo of an anguished father at Fox Grove Fishing Access where his child had just drowned. The grief in that photo was overpowering yet it was a “great” spot news photo because it carried emotions that words couldn’t capture. I would hope that the photo gave some adults pause to think about taking children who can’t swim to a deep and swift moving river.
Likewise, I believe it would be a grave disservice to refrain from publishing a photo of a motorcycle crash given that the image might cause people to consider the dangers of those things, or at least refrain from riding them in reckless fashion.
There is a value to unpleasant photos. It’s one thing to read a person was killed in a crash in words, but a photo can express a tragedy with greater gravity.
Photos pack incredible power. It’s just too bad Ireland Rolon, the victim, hadn’t seen and pondered such a photo before her crash.
Newspapers struggle with these decisions. In a column titled “Crash Photos: Are They Necessary?” former Victoria (Texas) Advocate Editor Gregg McLachlan wrote: “Why is it news? Humans are a curious species. We want to know what’s happening in our communities. We want to know why an ambulance and two police cars were racing down the highway the previous day. (Interestingly, when car crashes are not reported by the media, phone calls also come in to the editor’s desk asking why local news is not being covered).
“Car crash photos also help us learn. We learn the potential consequences of not wearing a seat-belt. We learn what may happen if we fall asleep at the wheel. And we learn what can happen when the rules of the road are disobeyed ...”
I’d bet most of those who complained about our crash photo last week are the same folks who rubber neck at an accident they happen upon; or the same folks who are constantly inquiring on Facebook about what’s the police are doing down the street.
We live in an era when people abandon thought and logic for “feelings.” Truth, it appears, is distorted to fit one’s value set. Kristi Vargas commented that our follow-up story on the CHP investigation was “pretty much placing all blame on the victim” and was “so sad, tasteless and heartbreaking.” We are left wondering why we are condemned for reporting that the victim – who was splitting lanes at a high rate of speed – was totally at fault for her fatal crash.
Don’t shoot the messenger here, folks.
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As one who moved out of my mom’s house at age 19, married at age 20, bought a mobile home at age 22 and my first home at age 25, this is disturbing.
There is a widespread failure to launch. It’s an epidemic.
According to RetirementInvestments.com, parents of Gen Z and Millennials are doing a lot more than just offering emotional support after their children turn 18.
Their new survey of 1,000 parents with kids ages 18 to 42, found more than half (55%) still help their adult children financially, sometimes at the cost of their own future. Nearly one in five (19%) have sacrificed their retirement savings to help their children.
On top of that, some are letting their kids live at home a lot longer than they should. Forty-one percent of the parents surveyed expected their kids to move out “by now,” or by age 23.
The reasons parents give for their kids being home: high cost of housing, schooling and – get this – they just want to live with their parents. It’s hard to grow up so I understand that they prefer mom and dad to be the ones to work hard and pay the electric and gas bill, mortgage, grocery bill, etc. But at some time you have to grow up, get off your butt, work hard and pay your own way.
Parents make it too easy. It’s bad enough that the kids are failing to launch, but the parents are accommodating their kids too much. The survey shows that 68 percent of the parents make meals for their kids, 56 percent buy the groceries their kids eat, 43 percent do their kids’ laundry! And if you can believe this, 26 percent schedule their kids doctor’s appointments and 11 percent have to wake up their kids to go to work! It’s probably not all that high because the kid doesn’t work.
Only one in five make their kids pay rent!
It’s no wonder adult kids aren’t growing up!
Apparently the parents are fine with their adult children sponging off of them – 94 percent of parents surveyed have not asked their kids to move out!
Adult kids living at home come at the expense of parents who can’t downsize and feel less financially stressed as they age.
To quote a famous movie line, “What we have here is failure to communicate.” How to communicate that hard work is the key to being independent but people have been conditioned, thanks to the Nanny State government, to believing somebody else should pay their way in life.
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Donald Trump did a great job in last week’s speech in outlining how much crap he has had to endure from the leftists in this country hell-bent to destroy him. A reasoned person would pull back and see how their hatred of the man and his policies are destroying our very system of justice. You have to conclude that there is a deep state and it is very real and will attempt to crush anyone who exposes the corruption of the unelected bureaucrats and FBI and DOJ. These are scary times in which Trump hatred justifies election interference. Well, I hope it backfires on them. We had it pretty good when Trump was president and under Biden we’ve been a nation in serious decline.
The late radio talk show host Art Bell posted this on his Facebook page four days before his death: “The FBI has just raided the office of the president’s lawyer. This is pretty serious stuff and I want to say again if the hate of Trump continues to be manifested by investigating everything Trump has ever done, they will get him on something eventually. If you tear anybody’s life apart and look at every little thing that they’ve ever done, you can get them.”
How prophetic. Bell’s words came in April 2018 and after he died we saw the endless Russian collusion nonsense, the FBI raiding the president’s house and now the Democrat New York prosecutor nonsense – all while the Biden family escapes real crimes of influence peddling and the Clintons get away with a myriad of crimes. It is such an obvious miscarriage of justice it should make our blood boil.
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As you know I enjoy a good meme. This one especially makes you think: “Ask not why the children shouldn’t see drag queens; ask why drag queens crave an audience of children.”
Why do drag queens want to contaminate the minds of young children – and in a public library of all places. Take your sick performances to private venues.
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I was one of the most vocal critics of former state Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who is now in Biden’s cabinet. Becerra favored open borders, opposed the border wall and sued Trump incessantly when he was president. He has been replaced by his clone, Ron Bonta, who is just as bad.
Just like Newsom and Becerra, last week Bonta decided to interfere with other states’ policies. Bonta is attacking the state of West Virginia where lawmakers there passed a bill which prevents girls pretending to be boys from joining boy teams and vice versa.
We all know have heard stories about how males pretending to be or confused about being female participate in girl’s track teams and skunk the real girls. Most of us see the problem given how the pretend girl really is a male who possesses different biological realities and physical strengths different than biological females.
Yet, Bonta declares that “Preventing transgender elementary kids from living regular lives through legislative action is absurd and dangerous.”
What is dangerous and absurd is the Democrat Party’s overt attempts to normalize the transgender phenomenon while neglecting the mental health aspect.
Bonta goes on: “No child should be denied the opportunity to have a normal childhood or play school sports because of their gender. Whether it’s in Florida, West Virginia, or anywhere else, my office is committed to safeguarding the rights of all of our nation’s children.”
Aside from the fact that Bonta’s office has no business interfering with other states’ policies – nor does Governor Nuisance – why would we expect any girl who thinks he’s a boy to have a “normal childhood.” We’re talking about an abnormal child here who really needs to see a shrink.
Bonta is also being dishonest because House Bill 3293 does not forbid children from playing school sports. What it does is – in the words of Bonta – require “segregation in school sports based on sex assigned at birth.”
“Sex assigned at birth” is such an odd phrase because it seems to infer there is a choice. I think the better term is “the gender of reality.” There is a genetic code that determines what our skin color is, our looks, our hair, eye color, etc., and yes, gender. Changing any of them doesn’t change reality.
A person who is male and thinks he’s female and vice versa is no less strange than a 61-year-old who identifies as a 31-year-old; or a person who has all four limbs but considers himself disabled to the point of seeking amputation. There are mental health issues that need to be addressed, not having society redefine what reality is.
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A wonderful man of faith and father of small children whom I met last year has been most encouraging me as an editorial writer. I won’t disclose his name but he has a very important job within the county organization.
Last week he forwarded an opinion piece written by Catholic League president Bill Donohue who is concerned about how transgenderism has even crept into and infected the church. Donohue writes that: “There is no religious organization in the history of the world that has ever taught that there are more than two sexes. However, in the 21st century, there are members of the clergy, and in other religious roles, who disagree: they believe that everyone who came before us in human history, including the teachers of their own religion, got it wrong.
“Micah Louwagie is a woman who pretends to be a man and who calls herself ‘they/them.’ We don’t play that game at the Catholic League — we are committed to telling the truth and we encourage others to do the same. No individual, including the sexually confused and the mentally challenged, can ever be referred to as a collectivity.”
Louwagie made the news as pastor of a Lutheran church in Fargo, North Dakota, who said the primary victim in the Nashville slaughter was the mass killer, Audrey Hale. Micah compared Hale’s death to the crucifixion of Jesus.
And why haven’t we been allowed to read the manifesto of this deranged transgender person? Maybe because it shows that it was the transgendered one who had the extreme hatred?
Donohue goes on: “Last month, the Episcopal Church issued a resolution, adopted by the bishops, saying they ‘decry legislative initiatives and governmental actions targeting trans children and their families.’ It would be more accurate to say they oppose legislation designed to protect children from those who seek to affirm transgenderism.’
Donohue continues: “Over 6,000 nuns recently published an open letter calling on everyone to support Trans Day of Visibility. The heretical nuns condemned the Catholic Church for ‘oppressing’ trans persons, though they did not offer any evidence to support their baseless claim.”
As further evidence that the world has lost its mind, Donohue cited how Rabbi Elliot Kukla says he is “transgender and nonbinary” and claims that in the Jewish tradition there are six sexes.
He concludes his piece citing how we once called those unable to distinguish between reality and fantasy “schizophrenic, and were treated in mental facilities. Now they are actively engaged in their churches and synagogues, anxious to inform the rest of us that we are the crazy ones.
“Wouldn’t it be great if they all bolted from their respective religions and established a new one, just for people like themselves?
“Instead of depopulating the asylums, we need to build more of them.”
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Apparently Newsom came to his senses on the issue of the state boycotting Walgreen’s. He was forced to backtrack on his ban, and even invited the company to reapply for a contract that was supposedly canceled.
Explaining the sudden turnaround, Newsom spokesman Anthony York insisted, “Tweeting is not policy.”
Sounds like the governor’s been taking his own advice from 2016, when he claimed “the American people always support ‘strong and wrong’” leaders.
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Marion County, Florida Sheriff Billy Woods was spot-on when he told reporters during a Friday press conference about the arrests of two suspects in a triple slaying that the gun is not responsible and that people are.
It’s reprehensible that NBC News described Woods’ remarks as a “wild rant” against gun control when he responded to a reporter’s question as follows: “There are individuals out there viewing, and (that) includes some of you (in the) media, who want to blame the one thing that has no ability or the capacity to commit the crime itself, and that’s the gun. These individuals committed the crime. All the gun laws we got in place didn’t prevent it, did it? Neither will any new ones. Because here’s the fact: The bad guy is going to get a gun no matter what law you put in place.”
Evidently some in the media can’t stand the truth.
The firearm used in the killings was stolen, which underscores the sheriff’s assertions about the failure of gun control laws to prevent criminals from getting their hands on firearms.
America doesn’t have a problem with guns, it has a problem with criminals, and with a justice system that treats them like victims.
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Go woke, go broke.
My choice of beer used to be Bud Light. No longer is that the case. The decision of Budweiser’s VP Alissa Heinerscheid to feature the nauseating man-pretending-to-be-a-woman Dylan Mulvaney on a beer can and thereby legitimize his mental illness, has reportedly tanked sales. To be honest, it should.
It should be a lesson to other companies to leave politics and Wokeness out of their marketing – especially beer.
Don’t expect Annheiser Busch to apologize either.
This column is the opinion of Jeff Benziger, and does not necessarily represent the opinion of The Ceres Courier or 209 Multimedia Corporation. How do you feel about this? Let Jeff know at jeffb@cerescourier.com
