The elements of St. Louis’ ever-unfolding tragedy came together once again in a fierce collision on Kingshighway early Friday. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n
See? They’re all elements in the ever-unfolding tragedy that is the city of St. Louis. Want to know what happened?<\/p>\n
Killed was Gary “Chip” Alter, 24, a recent St. Louis University graduate, a world traveler and a “handsome devil” with unlimited potential, in his mother’s words.<\/p>\n
Alter was driving north on Kingshighway from a friend’s home in the Hill neighborhood. He took a left to go west on Interstate 44 and home to Manchester.<\/p>\n
About 3:30 a.m., a Dodge Durango was 90 mph northbound in Kingshighway’s southbound lanes. It broadsided Alter.<\/p>\n
“My son’s life was taken much too soon,” a broken Joan Alter said later. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Schnuck it, the Post-Dispatch<\/i> isn’t going to tell you; the whole article is an exercise in passive-voice journalism, where unfortunate things occur. This pyramid structure has all of the important facts at the bottom of the article, building a sleepy storyline that casts no blame except to the abstract iniquity. Here’s what happened:<\/p>\nFive kids, between the ages 12 and 16, stole a Dodge Durango in the afternoon and spent the night breaking into cars while leaving the Durango running; when someone called the cops at 3:30 am, the St. Louis Tin pursued until a cop supervisor told them to back off. After the pursuit ended, the Durango, still fleeing, broadsided another car and killed its driver.<\/b><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Cripes, if only the driver had been drinking, he’d have a future with the Rams when he got out of juvenile camp and if he finished high school.<\/p>\n
Of the four things mentioned in the first lines of the article, one is responsible<\/b> for the tragedy, but the Post-Dispatch<\/i> really wants to blur that distinction and reduce all to just equally-weighted “elements,” probably because the actual responsible line item isn’t the SUV, the police, or the innocent. It’s the known juvenile delinquents.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch begins with a litany of unbulleted things it must want its readers to see as equivalent: A stolen SUV. Five unsupervised kids inside. Police in pursuit. An innocent in the way. Did you spot how they are different? The Post-Dispatch wants you to know how they are the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-st-louis-post-dispatch"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1166"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23062,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1166\/revisions\/23062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}