Another scary/depressing edition, unfortunately:
Here’s “Minister of Longitude.”
Jelani Cobb’s piece on Troy Davis’ murder is amazing:
[W]e were witness to a great evil — not solely the taking of what may well have been an innocent life, but also in the false certainty that sought to sell this killing as justice. When word came at 11:08 p.m. that Troy Davis was no more, women began wailing; several of them fell to the ground heaving inconsolably. A few men offered stumbling, meandering prayers that some good might come of this, that it would inspire some greater reckoning with the arbitrary, corrupted realities of capital punishment in this country.
And I, at that point, thought about my father, a native of Hazlehurst, Georgia who had abandoned his home state for New York in 1941. He lived the remainder of his life there, firm in his belief that a black man’s life was seen as worthless in Georgia. I grew up hearing the stories of the sadistic violence that was commonplace there, about a black women he’d known growing up who was raped and tortured by white men who went unpunished. I moved to Georgia in 2001, secure in my belief that the place had changed, that our efforts had yielded success and the stories my father told me were now consigned to the horror closets of history.
But last night, progress, hopes and a black presidency be damned, the state of Georgia had the last word. And they were determined to prove the old man right.
I would love to believe that this might somehow reverse public opinion on the death penalty, given Jeffrey Toobin’s belief that “no death penalty case has engendered this much public doubt and outrage since the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.” But the outrage was miniscule compared to the Two Minutes’ Hate for Casey Anthony, and the death penalty has outlasted the Rosenbergs, DNA exonerations, and Cameron Todd Willingham. I have little doubt it will outlast Davis.