Tuesday, April 10, 2012
An Unusual Letter
There is a letter to the editor from Ed Cross in today's Register-Star, which takes the newspaper to task for mentioning his nephew Quintin Cross, still a fugitive from justice, in its coverage of the arrest of Jamont McClendon, Cross's alleged accomplice in the March 19 break-in at City Hall. The article, bearing the headline "McClendon arrested; Cross still on the lam," appeared on April 4, the day of the funeral for Leslie Cross--Ed Cross's sister and Quintin's aunt.
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The author of the unusual letter begins by acknowledging an if/then: "If [he] did all this [then] he deserves what he gets." Indeed, the principle of presumed innocence must be paramount in all our considerations.
ReplyDeleteOn occasion, being so much in the news cycle for a host of proven reasons will be embarrassing. One of the other reasons is a self-admitted crime against the community as a whole.
An interesting questions arises concerning the degree to which an unhappy confluence of events in any one family becomes the burden of the community at large. If the crimes and alleged crimes are primarily directed at the community as a whole, to what degree must the community - or its newspaper - share the burden, or maybe even some blame?
In some senses Western Civilization began when it was decreed that the sins of the father must not be visited on the sons. The reverse must also hold true.
Sadly, the tension between individual actions and group identities persists.