Dartblog
Special Feature: Give a Rouse
Whither the College on the Hill? Dartblog brings you news and commentary from Hanover and the world at large, including deep coverage of the maturing tenure of Dr. Kim.
Archived post
This is an archived post. Please click here to see the latest entries.
« The Feds Made Me Do It | Home | What Jim (Wright) Gaveth, Jim (Kim) Should Take Away »
You Can Expess Your Own Opinion
How curious it is that people have come to internalize the language of bureaucracy and police procedure. In a NYT story yesterday about airline passengers’ courageous response to a terrorist, the bravest passenger of them all repeatedly refers to the terrorist that he restrained as the suspect:
“Without any hesitation, I just jumped over all the seats,” Mr. Schuringa said, in an account that other passengers confirmed.
“I was thinking, Oh, he’s trying to blow up the plane. I was trying to search his body for any explosive. I took some kind of object that was already melting and smoking, and I tried to put out the fire and when I did that I was also restraining the suspect.”
Mr. Schuringa said he had burned his hands slightly as he grappled with Mr. Abdulmutallab, aided by other passengers, and began to shout for water.
“But then the fire was getting worse, so I grabbed the suspect out of the seat,” Mr. Schuringa said. Flight attendants ran up with fire extinguishers, doused the flames and helped Mr. Schuringa walk Mr. Abdulmutallab to first class, where he was stripped, searched and locked in handcuffs.
“The whole plane was screaming — but the suspect, he didn’t say a word,” Mr. Schuringa said.
Mr. Schuringa was certain enough of the threat posed by Mr. Abdulmutallab that he thrashed him, but not sure enough to verbally express anything more than a suspicion. Too much television, perhaps?
Note: Today’s NYT had a cover picture of a well bloodied Iranian man being assisted in a friendly manner by law enforcement officers. The caption: “A police officer was taken away after allegedly being beaten.” It sure looked like he had been beaten to me. I mean, it’s not like he fell down the stairs. Perhaps the Teheran régime’s allegation is that demonstrators beat him — and the Times cannot be sure. But, then, to be consistent, the Times caption writer should have written, “An alleged police officer was allegedly taken away after allegedly being beaten.” I know that truth is indeterminate, but the Times is going a little too far here.
Featured posts
-
October 18, 2009
When Love Beckoned in 52nd Street
We were at San Francisco’s BIX last evening, enjoying prosecco, cheese, and a bit of music. A full year of inhabitation in Northern California has unraveled to me no decent venue for proper lounging, but… -
October 9, 2009
D Afraid of a Little Competish
So our colleague and Dartblog writer Joe Asch informed me that the D has rejected our cunning advertising campaign. Uh-oh. The Dartmouth is widely known as a breeding ground for instant New York Times successes,… -
September 4, 2009
How Regents Should Reign
As Dartmouth alumni proceed through the legal hoops necessary to defuse a Board-packing plan—which put in unhappy desuetude an historic 1891 Agreement between alumni and the College guaranteeing a half-democratically-elected Board of Trustees—it strikes one… -
August 29, 2009
Election Reform Study Committee
If you are an alum of the College on the Hill, you may have received a number of e-mails of late beseeching your input for a new arm of the College’s Alumni Control Apparatus called… -
August 23, 2009
Fare Thee Well, Tom Crady
And now Dean Tom Crady has precipitously announced his departure from the College after only 20 months on the job. How to read this? By way of background, prior to coming to Dartmouth, Crady had… -
May 31, 2009
Kangaroo Court, Indeed
In an interview with The Dartmouth, alumni-elected trustee T.J. Rodgers ‘70 explained his reasons for declining to participate in future evaluations of trustees up for “re-election,” namely the “kangaroo court” nature of such discussion in…