Here. I was looking for the link to “It’s a good life, having idiots hate you*” – that would be the motto for the site, if only it had a giraffe in there somewhere – but I will happily enough get sidetracked. For those too lazy to click the link: the joke involves whether it’s absurd sometimes to call some criminal or another ‘alleged.’ It’s one of those situations where both sides are right: the law is right to impose an inflexible standard for determining guilt even when it’s obvious that somebody’s as guilty as sin; and it’s wise to not confuse official, mandated skepticism with genuine skepticism in situations where one is under no legal obligation to do so.
Also, it’s pretty funny, in Wondermark’s dry way.
Moe Lane
*No need to track it down; I don’t need it at the moment and I can find it easily enough when I do.
It’s “alleged” because the press fears lawsuits more than they love truth.
My favorite example of this came just after the Mumbai terrorist attacks. The local paper showed one of the terrorists running through the Mumbai train station, AK-47 plainly visible and carried at the ready, and the caption read “This photo of one of the alleged gunmen…”
Man. With gun. Kind of makes him a gunman, doesn’t it?