Television News: All the News That’s Fit to Slant

Yesterday’s television headline and scroll bar blurb: "Mother Dies in Airport Jail Cell. "

It turns out that this unfortunate “mother” was the daughter-in-law of someone famous. In addition, according to news reports, she was mentally ill and had had a history of substance intoxication. I have no idea if the 45-year-old woman had ever worked; nor do I know the ages of her children or if she lived with them or why she was traveling alone in her condition.

I know that she was a mother. And, mother is a word packed with explosives.

So, naturally, I wondered: Had this woman had been a man who died under similar conditions, would the headlines and scroll bars have read: “Father Dies in Airport Jail Cell?”

Of course not. A man would have been a man or a profession.

Okay, perhaps motherhood was this woman’s fulltime occupation. But, if you throw yourself into the embrace of a substance, isn’t that substance your new fulltime occupation?

Here are a few more factual possibilities:

“Drug Addict Dies in Airport Jail.”
“Recuperating Drug Addict Dies in Airport Jail.”
“Mentally Ill Woman Dies in Airport Jail.”
“Forty-Five-Year-Old Woman Dies in Airport Jail.”
“Angry Woman Dies in Airport Jail.”
Or
“Woman Dies in Airport Jail.”