There's been much talk lately about the death penalty, and it gives us another look at Death Euphemisms.
Look at headlines covering the execution of Stanley Tookie Williams. The LA Daily News, CNN and San Jose Mercury News both say it in one, bold word: "Execution". For CNN.com, NPR, and MSNBC, he was "put to death".
One obviously sounds softer. "Put to death" sounds like something you do to an old dog. It almost sounds like "put to bed".
Most outlets lean toward Execution. I agree. There's nothing soft about death by injection.
4 comments:
Don't you inject old dogs? The Spanish press seems to think that "execution" sounds soft and is taking the line that he was tortured and murdered by that deranged Yankee imperialist Arnold Black Ploughman.
Perhaps this is not the place to ask this question but I will do what is expected and offend nonetheless:
What happened to joke 3/4?
trevor:
Whoa. Really? Do you have a source? (I'm pretty sheltered and don't get in much language-I-don't-speak reading in... but I'm intrigued).
Another thought: As of the evening news and mid-afternoon webnews, the story was dead as well. Gone. No mention that it was even of interest. Blame a 24 newsworld, I guess.
frank:
It's back. I took it down because I wanted to post a timelier thought on the execution. It was only up, like, an hour... nice catch.
And, I noticed it should be 4/4, so I changed that.
(yes, it started out as a list of 7, but the tumbleweeds in the comment box made me scale back)
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