Americans love sports. In fact, I know many people who put more effort into assembling their fantasy football teams than investing their 401K plans. We can quote chapter and verse regarding our favorite players, yet most of us have no clue who possess our greatest scientific minds. It’s an ugly fact, but it’s part of what makes us a great nation.
Death, as they say, is the great equalizer. Although it comes in many forms its result is always the same. The funny thing is, we don’t view death the same way. Which brings me to the sad tales of Annie Le and Jasper Howard, two of three Connecticut students killed at their respective schools this year. WTNH News Channel 8 provides continuous coverage off all three.
Jasper Howard may have been a great football player, but we’ll never know. His athletic abilities vaulted him from the hard streets of Miami, Fl. to the bucolic campus of the University of Connecticut at Storrs. There, under the guidance, tutelage, and constant watch of his coaches Howard was to graduate into the National Football League. Unfortunately, Howard’s life was cut brutally short for he was stabbed to death outside the University’s Student Union. A tragic end to a promising life.
No one knows for sure if Jasper Howard would have made it to the NFL. The odds were against him. Yet the scouts were already checking him out and his jersey was a hot seller at the campus bookstore. People knew him. He was a star.
During the homicide investigation, there were not many calls from the networks. There were not rows of satellite trucks outside UConn’s Police Department. Howard’s murder was treated as a news blurb on the morning talk shows. Nothing more, nothing less.
The murder of Yale student Annie Le however, became a national story! It had all the lurid details, which the networks love. A brilliant, young Ivy League student. Her brutal murder-taking place just before her wedding. It was exactly the type of story Producers dream of and every reporter wants to cover.
In the days after Le went missing until the arraignment of her alleged killer, the networks howled like wild dogs feeding on the carcass of the dead girl. New Haven’s nice hotels were filled with network types and it was hard to get a drink at a good bar. Fights broke out on the steps of New Haven’s Police Department headquarters as teams vied to get decent backdrops. It was nothing less than the belly of television news laid bare for all who wanted to, and could bear to see.
The Assignment Desk, like Death, plays no favorites. Murders are a series of live shots and reporter packages. They are updates and court appearances. They are memorial services, funerals and then forgotten. Unless it’s someone I know or love, I couldn’t care less.
There is no fantasy league of scientists. For all we’ll ever know, Annie Le may have cured cancer while Jasper Howard may have failed in his bid to join the NFL and ended back on those hard streets of Miami.
Why does the star athlete get next to no network coverage, while the budding scientist makes national headlines? If you don’t already know the answer, then stay with me and I’ll teach you.
Quo Fata Ferunt!
