Thursday, July 16, 2009

The New Yorker and a cruel sheriff

The New Yorker published an 11-page piece in its July 20 issue on Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona, known for torture and deaths that occur in his jails, and for the cruelty and humiliation he orders to be practiced on arrested persons, including those awaiting trial. My letter to the editor:

"Granted the New Yorker is characterized by its eclectic content, how can you justify devoting the better part of eleven pages to Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio who is characterized by indefensible acts of cruelty? If you meant to illustrate the horror and nightmare his practices have brought to thousands of our fellow citizens you could have done it in a more tightly edited piece. Given perhaps that was not your choice, did you mean to glorify him? Your magazine has not given such space to the like of presidents or notable figures in culture and the arts. Why join the mainstream media in its obsession with narcissistic and pathological figures?"

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