It's Execution Time!

So, as we have all heard, Timothy McVeigh has been executed, courtesy of presidential authorisation - the first federal execution for something like half a century in the USA.  And this in the face of international opinion which becomes more stridently anti-execution, especially from the EU. One wonders how the USA can berate countries like China when there is a growing trend towards capital punishment at home?

Watching the cover from over here (we were in Austin at the time), over the weekend and on Monday and Tuesday, the commentary and interviews was gobsmacking.

The commentary on television was wall-to-wall sentimentality tinged with a sort of blood-lust. In all the hundred of interviews we watched, there was only a single interviewee who had an objective and sensible commentary - if you remember the movie "Dead Man Walking", the interviewee was the nun that was played by Susan Sarandon in the movie!

Her point was that the state was providing an opportunity for sanctioned vengeance, but after the event when the relatives return home the chair of their loved one would still be empty. The overall effect of this was to traumatise yet another family.

All in all, watching this spectacle was a sad reflection on the US television and newspaper industries who seemed to go out of their way to avoid any objective debate, despite the actions of the terrorist being politically based - did he have a point?