Classical Values :: Guns don't kill horses! People kill horses!

July 24, 2006

Guns don't kill horses! People kill horses!

I'm having some serious logical problems with this:

It's time for all of us to collectively mourn more for people than we do for a horse. If we don't show the most desperate among us that we value their lives more than an animal's, they have no reason not to kill indiscriminately.

So says Philadelphia City Paper's Brian Hickey, who's upset about the press coverage paid to the fate of Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro.

Hickey contrasts Barbaro with a murdered man named Damon Edward Heggs, who not only didn't receive as much press coverage as Barbaro, but whose family received nowhere near the public attention devoted to Barbaro:

. . .on the ride home, I got to thinking about the anonymous well-wishers who order carrots by the caseload and ship them over to an animal hospital that's decorated by 4-foot-high get-well cards covered with signatures. About how we're almost at the point that Barbaro's bowel movements qualify as breaking news. By the time I got back to the Philadelphia Theater of War, I knew why:

We the people care more about an animal than we did about Damon Edward Heggs.

I'm not too fond of the first person plural being used that way, because not only did I not send carrots to Barbaro, I care about most of the people I know far, far more than I would care about any horse. If I don't know someone, it's impossible for me to care as much as I would care about someone I do know, but still, I favor human life over animal life. If the brakes went out on my car and I had to choose between running into a horse or a human being, I would choose the horse every time. Regardless of the value of the horse, and regardless of what kind of life had been lived by the human. (Obviously, the value of human life is also reflected in society's laws, which make murder a capital crime, but which allow the humane killing of horses.)

Whether that's good enough for Mr. Hickey, I do not know. But it certainly isn't good enough for animal rights activists, who maintain that Barbaro was a victim whose life was every bit as worthy of that of Mr. Heggs.

Here's In Defense of Animals:

Many racehorse "owners" see these animals purely as economic investments, so rather than trying to save the lives of horses injured during competition, they will choose to simply euthanize them to spare themselves the expense of veterinary services. The least sympathetic investors can even recoup some of their losses by selling an injured horse to a slaughterhouse where they will be killed just as cattle are: with a shot from a captive bolt pistol to the head and a knife blade across the throat. Winners like Barbaro aren't kept alive simply out of compassion. This repeat winner will be used for breeding other racehorses, continuing this vicious cycle of abuse.

Racehorses have been genetically selected and bred for one specific purpose: to run extremely fast. These animals normally weigh over 1,000 pounds, but their ankles are as thin as a human being's, making them very fragile indeed. As long as thoroughbreds are forced to race one another at excessive speeds with a rider jockeying for position on surfaces that can be as hard as cement, there will be serious injuries, many of them fatal. In this way, racehorses are victims of a multi-billion dollar industry that literally gambles with their lives. It can never be an acceptable form of "entertainment" to those who truly care about the welfare of animals.

I don't know how Mr. Hickey would answer the IDA argument. Might he and the AR activists be able to agree on capitalism as the common enemy?

What Mr. Hickey finds so offensive is that the media pay more attention to Barbaro than Mr. Heggs. That, however, is a direct result of market forces, not morality. The same people who decide to run big headlines about Barbaro, while barely mentioning another fatal victim of street crime, have not made a moral decision that a horse life is more valuable than a human life. If the statue of William Penn fell off Philadelphia City Hall tomorrow, it would be a HUGE headline in all the local papers, even if no one was hurt. Does that mean that "we the people" care more about bronze statues than human beings? Of course not. Would people be more upset? Yes, and they'd probably volunteer more time and money to get the building repaired than they would for a victim's family. But it doesn't mean that they place greater moral value on statues than on human life. These things are not logically related. Many people are more interested in the sports page or business section than the news section, and this does not mean that they place a higher value on baseball than surviving a nuclear attack by Iran or North Korea.

Then there's this:

If we don't show the most desperate among us that we value their lives more than an animal's, they have no reason not to kill indiscriminately.

First of all, who is included in "the most desperate among us"? Mr. Heggs? Here's what Hickey tells us about him:

Marcia explained that her son was a good kid. He went to Overbrook, ran a cleaning business and had a 3-year-old daughter. He didn't smoke, drink or have enemies. He didn't get in trouble.

"The police," she said, "assured me that it was a wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time thing."

OK, so that makes Mr. Heggs a successful, law-abiding entrepreneur and father. Doesn't sound like "the most desperate among us" to me, any more than a lot of people I know. I'm not getting it. His life had value, and he was murdered.

As far as I'm concerned, his murderer should get the death penalty, or at least life in prison. Of course, now that I've said that, I'm thinking that perhaps Mr. Hickey thinks that the murderer was in the "most desperate" category. That he may have killed because "we" place more value on the life of an animal than on his. How can Hickey be so sure? Can he look into the mind of the murderer? For all we know, the guy was shooting at someone else, and Damon Heggs got caught in crossfire.

Assuming the murderer was the kind of person who had "no reason not to kill indiscriminately," can it be that Hickey is seriously suggesting that had the murderer realized that society places more value on human life than on the life of a racehorse (which I think it does), that he would not have killed? That some sort of mass "collective mourning" of murder victims in deliberate disproportion to the alleged collective mourning of dead horses is going to change the reasoning of anyone callused enough to shoot people?

I don't think so. I think the way to show that society values the lives of people is to prosecute those who kill them.

As I've explained, I value the life of Mr. Heggs more than the life of Barbaro. But, at the risk of sounding callused, I'd value the life of Barbaro more than the life of a murderer.

(If I didn't know any better, I'd swear that Hickey was using a straw horse to blur the distinction between murderers and victims.)

UPDATE (07/28/06): Brian Hickey has responded in a comment below. While I continue to disagree with him, the fact that he came here to defend his piece speaks well of his integrity, and of the City Paper.

posted by Eric on 07.24.06 at 05:47 PM

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Comments

I don't think this is a comparative thing. If pushed to choose between sparing the life of Mr. Heggs or Barabaro, I doubt that there is anyone, or at least any measurable proportion of the populace, who would not say "too bad about the horse" and favor the life of the human.

I think instead that we are drawn to Barbaro because of his special qualities of excellence, beauty, heroism (wanting to continue to run after injured). So when we contemplate Barbaro's situation, we are sad because of the loss of those qualities exemplified in the horse. Not because the horse is valued more than the human.

Time for Mr. Brian Hickey to relax.

pikkumatti · July 24, 2006 10:53 PM

I agree, but I would more if Barbaro had actually won the Triple Crown. He's just the latest in a looong line of teaser disappointments.

Adam · July 25, 2006 01:22 AM

Stories about hurt/dead animals do tug at people's heart strings better than hurt/dead humans. I have no doubt of that.

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6339

[REMAINDER OF COMMENT REMOVED.]

Jon Thompson · July 25, 2006 03:23 AM

I saw that, but c'mon. Its the city paper, and if it isn't manufacturing outrage about something, its not happy.

Eric Blair · July 25, 2006 07:57 AM

I suppose, after thanking you all for taking the time to read my column, I should go through this point by point:

- This has nothing to do with grammar, whether you sent carrots or if you'd run over a horse rather than a person. It's a matter of people spending more time pining for news, on a daily basis, about a horse's broken leg than they wonder whether there's a story behind each of Philadelphia's murders rather than a statistic.
As evidenced by Damon's story, one of more than 200 that have gone woefully untold this year alone, they don't.

- How would I answer IDA's argument? I'd say, "Hey, there's a lot of truth to what you're saying." It is a cruel sport. But at the same time, I'm not going to question the motivations of a group of people who say they're not keeping their horse alive based on economic considerations. If they say they're doing so out of compassion, I'm willing to take them at their word.

- It's not about market forces. Advertisers couldn't care less whether the lead story is about a murder or a non-story horse-condition update. Newspapers, especially those with new ownership, make their decisions based on what they think their readers want. Sure, a historic statue falling would be a big story whether there were injuries or not. That's because it's a landmark. And that's because it's something that's never happened before, hence, a newsworthy event and not evidence that we the people care more about bronze statues than human beings. You could make that argument about the subject of any individual story that a newspaper runs; it just doesn't pass the logic test.

- The most desperate among us are those who turn to crime since they see no other way out of their situations. Or those who live in poverty and can't get themselves out regardless of how much effort or hard work they put into it. Read a little deeper; despite the fact that he was a father and an entrepreneur, he still had to live in a rough part of town, a part of town in which gunshots ring out regularly. If that doesn't breed desperation, what does?

- No, a man didn't pull a trigger and kill Heggs because he was mad at the attention Barbaro was getting. Rather, the attention speaks to a culture, one that shows a collective indifference to daily life in Philadelphia's rough neighborhoods, an indifference that breeds desperation and a devaluing of life. Drive through the neighborhood sometime and tell me whether you disagree.

- I haven't the first clue what you're getting at when you, with a throw-in paranthetical comment, hypothesize that I'm trying to blur the line between murderers and victims.

- Time to relax? I'll relax when people don't think it's acceptable to mow one another down night after night in my hometown.

- It's borderline lawsuit time to accuse someone of murder.

- And, finally, I'm not in the business of manufacturing outrage, nor does it make me "happy" to do so. Rather, I'm outraged by the state of affairs in Philadelphia today and, as a columnist, I'm damn well going to speak out about it.

All the best,
Brian

Brian Hickey · July 28, 2006 07:12 AM

Mr. Hickey, thanks for coming and defending your position.

Obviously, we disagree, as I don't think your article established a relationship between desperation and murder -- certainly none that would have any relationship to the news coverage of an injured horse. My point is that whoever the person who shot Mr. Heggs may be, there's no way to know whether he was desperate at all in the sense you describe. When someone shoots a law abiding man without provocation, I think the primary goal should be punishing him -- whoever he is. Even if it turned out he was in some way desperate (as opposed to evil), that should normally be taken into account at sentencing, and not in my opinion blamed on the news coverage of a horse.

I am glad to hear that it wasn't your goal to blur the distinction between the criminal and the victim here, as I see the contrast between them as extreme.

As to your contention that "it's borderline lawsuit time to accuse someone of murder," I agree. Unless you are contending that commenter Jon's sarcastic remark is a serious accusation, the only person I accused of murder is the still-unknown murderer. As he is unknown and unnamed, I don't think that's even an accusation. Assuming the facts were as you related them, shooting someone in cold blood or during the commission of a felony is murder.

Thanks again.

Eric Scheie · July 28, 2006 10:42 AM

It doesn't take an article to make a connection between desperation and murder. I invite you to head up to the neighborhood where this happened, the 2500 block of North Napa Street, and return thinking there isn't an air of desperation. There's no need to prove a connection; it's already there.
It's an overall civic desperation when people get mowed down for no reason; that's not to speak to the motive of a particular murder.

And sarcasm or not, the words "Hickey killed Heggs," are, on their face, borderline lawsuit time.

Thanks.

Brian Hickey · July 28, 2006 02:42 PM

I think it's obvious that Jon's comment was sarcastic humor and that no reasonable person could possibly think it was an accusation of murder. It is patently ridiculous, and on the same level of someone saying "Eric Scheie killed Vincent Foster!" if I had written about the Vincent Foster death.

Under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Ast, I have no legal responsibility for anything a commenter says, nor do I have any responsibility to delete comments -- even if I have done so before.

http://www.paed.uscourts.gov/documents/opinions/06D0657P.pdf

However, I try to be reasonable and conciliatory about these things, and while I don't think anyone could consider the comment an accusation against you, I think it's possible that it might tend to hurt the feelings of the Heggs family, so I have edited the offending portion from Jon's comment.

Eric Scheie · July 28, 2006 04:22 PM

Believe me, I've been called much worse than that. (And I don't think the cops'll be knocking on my door soon because of it.)
But what isn't patently ridiculous is my suspicion that, if they were to see it, the comment would make the Heggs' think people were joking about Damon's murder.
I appreciate you editing it, and I appreciate an intelligent debate about my column. Feel free to keep reading (citypaper.net); I'm sure you'll find something else you disagree with in a matter of minutes.

Cheers,
Brian

Brian Hickey · July 28, 2006 05:44 PM