Tragedy, or the commons?

27. March 2009 by Samldanach.

Cop stops man for traffic violation, prevents him from seeing his dying mother.

I’m pretty sure you’ve seen something about it.  It’s pretty thoroughly unreasonable.  This guy races to the hospital, having been told his mother only has minutes to live.  He breaks at least one traffic law in his haste.  A cop pulls him over in the hospital parking lot for running a red light, and refuses to let him go until he writes up the ticket.

 The cop doesn’t believe he’s done anything wrong.  The community is outraged, the department is embarrassed.

 My question:  Why is this national news on CNN?  Because it’s a gross violation of basic human decency?  Or, is it because the guy in question happens to be a professional athlete?  If it was the proverbial Joe the Plumber, would he have even been able to get the local news to run the story?

 I don’t know.  On the one hand, yeah, his fame probably has something to do with it.  My cynicism can’t quite decide which side to fall on, though.  Is this only news because one of our society’s gods has been desecrated?  Or would the easy, black-and-white moralizing of this case have garnered media attention anyway? 

 I mean, it is incredibly easy to summarize this entire story in a single sentence, and not really lose any critical information.  All of the details only serve to reinforce the original statement - the cop cost a man his last few minutes with his dying mother over a traffic ticket.  The cop doesn’t get any more reasonable or sympathetic, no matter how closely you look at the case.  That makes it absolutely ideal for our sound-bite driven modern journalistic delivery. 

 So, it probably would have gotten at least local play (with lots of outraged blog linking) even for Joe.  The football factor just served to push it up to that next level.

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