Inquirer celebrates spammer murder-suicide
There's an air of celebration down at The Inquirer at the news that fugitive spammer Eddie Davidson decided to do the decent thing and kill himself. Here's our take on the story, but check out the opposition's view on the whole sorry affair. Well, as an opener, this takes some beating: "Not all stories have a happy ending, but …
The response to a suicide is never simple. Nothing we can say or do will affect the dead. Leaving us with doing the next right thing for those who alive.
How we respond to someone else's crisis is a good measure of our humanity, our personal morality and a strong reflection of family values. Imagine the impression this person is making on his children and grand children.
In case you haven't done any follow up, which seems to be case in point for this rag, the Inq posted an apology. Is it the right thing to do, yeah, but it's not standard operating procedure for them, so I am sort of impressed.
Charlie is a dick, but he says that the article was supposed to be sarcastic and extremely dark humour. If it was meant as satire, then we all missed the point. When Jonathan Swift first wrote A Modest Proposal, people were in an uproar over his disgusting piece, taking it as truth; satire often has that effect.
Was it bad taste? Absolutely. Is Charlie a fraction of the writer Swift was? Not even close. But if that was the intention of the article, then do your best to stop being biased and accept that.
What I find almost as deplorable as the original article as Charlie wrote it, is the fact that a rival rag takes this opportunity to post a snippy little article flaming the Inq about this. How is bashing your competition and writing sanctimonius articles news? It's sad. I am sure if both sides wanted to, you could fire back and forth about tons of articles, and watch us readers leave you both behind. The article was in bad taste, and your reply was petty and shallow. Did it make you feel good?
Both sides need to try and become real grown up journalists at some point.
I agree with TheInq, Charlie's original version.
*shrug*
First, the fact that Charlie's article even saw the light of day was wrong. Secondly, to make a half-hearted attempt at downplaying the death of this individual's wife and child and the injury of another shows a complete lack of class by the 'reporter'.
To be perfectly blunt, Davidson was a waste of skin and got what he deserved. I absolutely refuse to feel any remorse for a criminal, coward and a murderer of their own family. I hope the bastard is roasted in a most vile place in hell.
Conversely, my heart goes out to the survivor and remaining family members and I wish them a full & speedy recovery and most heartfelt condolences on their loss.
Hmmm, who causes the most harm? Some guy who wastes our time and money filling up our inboxes, or some moron who thinks its 'cool' or 'telling it how it is' or thinks he's being 'brave' by 'challenging' the wolly-minded liberal elite that runs the media (yes, the one that only exists in the mind of would-be Brownshirts) by celebrating some guy killing his little girl and his wife.
I'm all for the freedom of the press, so I wouldn't wish to see this guy stop writing. However, I think the level of hell reserved for spammers is probably much less painful than the one kept aside for journalist like this.
Maybe more important than the easy access to guns is this little tidbit from the Denver post article.
"Assistant U.S. Attorney Tim Neff said Davidson had become a "consultant" to the FBI investigating other spammers."
I wonder if that status is what allowed him out of jail. Work release is very common in minimum security jails. In other words he walked out on his own.
Forget the gun issue. It is nothing but a hunk of metal until someone uses it. If he had been where the Judge put him. In jail. None of this would have happened.
The whole gun-control argument is deeply tedious (and i honestly don't want to have it again for fear of being shot) but i think it's fair to say that if the idiot in question did not have a gun, he wouldn't have shot his family.
Would he have gone round and suffocated them one-by-one with a pillow? we'll never know. But that isn't really the point is it?
brutally slain vulture icon, for obvious reasons.
I was (a bit) shocked when I read that article; but then Charlie is a juvenile twit; most of his output just inflammatory nonsense. I guess that's why they keep him on.
I don't understand why some people say he was downplaying the murder of wife and kid. That wasn't' the subject of his article. Might his article have been phrased differently? Maybe so. However, his article was about the spammer and his opinion of the fellow.
He did not attack the family or make light of it. Plenty of news outlets have discussed the entire tragedy. Why would he need to repeat what everyone already knows? He wrote the article specifically about a guy he truly despised and said good riddance.
If Bill Gates or President Bush/Obama/Kennedy (or any famous name) went down in a plane crash most of the news outlets would focus on that famous person and not go much into the details of the other individuals (pilot/passengers). Why is this any different? Before people go and shout and rage they out to think a little bit.
I enjoy reading both sites and I rarely comment. But this time I felt the need to respond for 2 reasons.
#1 I don't think Charlie was in the wrong and is getting bashed for no reason.
#2 I think The Register used this story as more of a "kick in the pants/we gotcha" piece more than an actual news worthy story. I may be wrong but that's how it came off to me.
Let's get all done with the bickering and go back to enjoyable reading. It'd be a shame to lose either one of you.
Sincerely,
Joe
in my country. Life is simply too cheap. However, I can't imagine any publication here would go in the direction of the Enquirer regarding such an event. Topping ones' self is all well and good, but leave the innocents and bystanders out of it.
Only Darwin awards can really be addressed humourously.
Judith Martin is the American newspaperwoman who uses the trademarked nom de plume "Miss Manners" for her books and newspaper columns on etiquette and manners.
Somewhere in her books, she discusses what can be broadly called "penalties for misbehavior" and comments that society sensu latu imposes far more severe penalties on those who break its rules than the law does on those who violate mere statutory law. Further, that social penalties have no court of appeal: they are simply imposed by a large number of individuals acting on their own.
Now this analysis is an exaggeration, but at the same time it contains a great deal of truth. It puts the universal, profound distaste for spammers in a different light -- and leads to inhumane articles such as the one in the Inquirer under discussion.
Consider the thinking process (however flawed) of this now-deceased spammer. The worst that the law would do to him on recapture was to extend his sentence, and imprison him in a less comfortable jail. But (I speculate) his social environment had been shattered, and from that there is no recovery. Everybody hates spammers.
One can speculate that his conviction had opened his eyes to the nature of his sins, and he could not contemplate a life of social ostracism. Perhaps we can say that he had been improperly socialized as a child and only now, when it was too late, had he realized how important fitting into society is.
I will, in view of the seriousness of the discussion, refrain from childishness such as proposing courses in etiquette for geeks.
But I must say, not for him.
I have often thought that if the light discontent felt by the millions of people who received one of his mail was concentrated on the spammer, he would be vaporized instantly.
I would maybe not cheer his death, but as for a Darwin award, I do feel the world is not missing much. The fact he killed his family makes him even more despicable. It may be that, as he knew the world would not regret his death, he took his family with him out of spite to make the world feel bad: "Look what you made me do".
Condolences to the still-living daughter.
The only thing that's happening here is that the Inquirer is getting free publicity. Which is exactly WHY such cheap rags (computerised or not) engage in these calculated 'errors of judgement' - and then bask in the furore afterwards while everyone throws their name around, click to see what all the fuss is about, write in to express their disgust, and so on.
You don't have any idea what spammers do. Even if he had no blood directly on his hands he deserves no restraint just because he's a supposed "white collar" criminal. In any business which steals hundreds of millions of dollars though you can bet they *are* responsible for numerous deaths. I personally have been driven nearly to a blind rage just from the frustration of dealing with the onslaught of spam. I would bet he's contributed to more than a few suicides, ie from people screwed in his pump and dump stock scams. In my book he's a serial murderer.
"Only in the US will the lunatics argue that weapons make us safer"
No. I'm a Brit, now living in Ireland, and I think a society where citizens are armed, educated and trained in using weapons is safer. If you look at the stats fopr the places where gun control has been relaxed in the US and you'll see more people are being shot. Look a bit deeper and you'll see the people BEING shot are most often would-be perpetrators of crime.
If his wife had been armed, trained and educated, would he have been able to perpetrate this crime, I wonder? Maybe, maybe not.
But as it seems she wasn't, she didn't get the chance to prove otherwise.
Your fear of weapons is no reason to disarm the rest of us.
-- Jon
I'd like to echo Joe's comments above, and add my own two pennies worth.
The reaction to Charlie's article seems rather similar to the supposed outrage of various politicians/newspaper editors/media commentators etc following Channel 4's Brass Eye special on pedophilia a few years back. Just as Chris Morris (in Brass Eye) wasn't making light of the problem of pedophilia, neither was Charlie of the deaths of these innocent people.
Yes, the event that lead up to these articles is most certainly a tragedy for the innocent victims, their families and friends. But I somehow doubt that any of those are the people commenting here about what Charlie had written. They surly have other things on their minds right now.
And yes, Charlie's article probably was close to the mark, and for that The Inq have apologised. But I do not see how using this tragedy as an excuse to have a dig at a rival (or should I say sibling given The Inq and The Reg's common parentage) is any better, Lester.
So lets all come down from the moral high ground for a bit, the air is somewhat thin up there after all.
Today: August 13, 2008
The relevant articles and comments have disappeared from the main screen and all is forgotten by the public consciousness.
As much as I dislike the original Inq article, I find the Reg using it as a thinly veiled attack on it's sibling even more repellent, using a situation like this as ammunition to attack the Inq is tasteless beyond belief. I thought the Reg was better than this.
At least the Inq reconsidered and apologised!!
What kind of world do we live in where the death of people can be "OK" because one of them was a spammer?
Some things are funny and El Reg sends them up sky high, such as crowd farms. Some things are not funny... such as babies being shot.
Thank you El Reg for you very factual and sober coverage of this tragic event. Thank you even more for providing an insight into just how low some people, Inq, are. To think we share a genone with such...creatures.
To anybody who thinks being a spammer is justification for getting killed; Turn off the computer, get up and go outside. There is a big world out there, maybe you will find a place in it. I could say something unkind but Lester shows us we don't have to be like that.
Jack
And what editorial value does your mud-slinging piece of drivel you call a "news" story have? Your story is nothing more than an attempt to cash in on the same tragedy. Yours is just "disguised" as editorial comment. Charlie's story may have been poorly worded, but yours is just attention seeking garbage.
Apparently many of you can't read. Nowhere in his writing did he glorify or take pleasure in the murder that mans family, just his.
It must be tad precarious sitting on a horse quite that high up...
Most here are showing a normal and healthy standard of human compassion, which is heartening.
However, this guy was a *spammer*, a class of cerebrally deficient sociopaths that just do not have the concept of conscience, and have no qualms about nuking the oceans to catch the shrimps. There is no place on earth for this kind of scum.
I am sad for his family, but I shed no tears for him.
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