Even with Evidence for Intent, Reporting on Dallas Crash Erases Driver; Note on Macy's

Even when there is clear evidence for malignant intent, our messed up autoism leads writers to employ the exonerative voice.

Erasing the driver in the exonerative voice

Mere days after the cars attacks in New Orleans and in Las Vegas, in the paper today is news of a driver facing charges of reckless endangering and reckless driving, robbery and criminal mischief, DUI, when he deliberately crashed into a Dallas convenience store. There is reason to think investigators will find evidence that it was a hate crime also.

But the headline is "truck crashes," and the caption is "a truck that drove."

Most crashes aren't accidents. This case is particularly unambiguous. Even under the most optimistic of assumptions, there is no possible way to view this as an "accident." It was intentional, an attack with the car as weapon. The first sentence of the story itself does say "he crashed a truck," but the true grammatical subject and moral agent here, the driver, should also be in headlines and captions, especially since people will only read the headline as the story circulates on social media. The exonerative voice is especially misleading and wrong here, but entirely symptomatic of our autoism. 

See previously on erasing driver.

Front page today

On the front page is news that Macy's is going to close.

The owners are talking about more "activities, events, and entertainment for people living and visiting downtown."

This could be a very great missed opportunity for more housing!

Since it has an attached parking garage, and sits in between the Center/Marion couplet, it is ideal for fully car-oriented downtown housing, perhaps the only site downtown where that is true. The City and owners should lean into this!

See "What about the Macys Block?" (2016) for more on this. As the closure details are formalized and as plans for redevelopment mature, there will certainly be more to say.