Monday’s front-page New York Times “news analysis,” “Pretti’s Killing Burst a Dam — A Victim Who Inspired What Others Had Not,” was a story of the triumph of individual decency over government thuggery – in the distorted view of the Times, anyway.
The online headline deck called Alex Pretti’s shooting death after a struggle with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers a “National Tipping Point.” This is how the Times wields power — we’ll decide the Tipping Points!
The front-page “news analyzer” is Kurt Streeter, “who writes about identity in America — racial, political, religious, gender and more.” That’s a better fit for Streeter’s liberal activism than his previous “Sports of the Times” perch, from which Streeter shoehorned in his personal politics at every opportunity into stories at every opportunity. As the screenshot quote shows, he loves (liberal) activist athletes.
Both deaths provoked outrage. But Mr. Pretti’s reached further — into conservative circles that had defended the crackdown, and among independents, who had been willing to look away. Why did his death cross political lines that Ms. Good’s, for all the anger it generated, didn’t?
It is never possible to say with certainty why one tragedy widens the circle of outrage and another does not. History offers precedents.
Suddenly Pretti was being compared to Rosa Parks (and, um, George Floyd).
George Floyd was not the first Black man to die at the hands of police in 2020. The searing video of his death, however, and the moment it arrived — during heightened unease around police misconduct — turned his killing into a movement. Rosa Parks was not the first person to refuse to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus; a 15-year-old named Claudette Colvin had been arrested after performing the same act months earlier. But it was Parks, for reasons both strategic and circumstantial, whose case became a catalyst. Tipping points are often visible only in hindsight.
This story and its prominent placement demonstrates how valorization of Pretti continues to dominate the media, even after the man’s previous violent attack on ICE emerged.
Mr. Drakulich uses a term for the kind of victim the public instinctively sympathizes with: the “ideal victim.” Two attributes make someone fit. “Someone whose life and well-being is broadly valued,” he said, “and someone who people can judge as not bearing any responsibility for their victimization.”
….He was not a so-called criminal immigrant, whom officials say they were targeting, but a white American citizen. He was an intensive care-unit nurse at a V.A. hospital, caring for veterans. A video of him saluting a deceased patient had circulated months earlier. He was a legal gun owner, with a gun permit, and no criminal record. On camera, in the moments before he was killed, he displayed what a former student called his “familiar stillness and signature calm composure.”
He did not run. He came to the aid of a stranger. Masked federal agents killed him nonetheless.
Finally, in paragraph 26 out of 32, Streeter briefly noted the complicating video, details which would have been near the top in a fair account.
But new footage emerged on Wednesday that may yet complicate the narrative. The video shows Mr. Pretti on Jan. 13, 11 days before he was killed, in a confrontation with federal agents. He spits at them and kicks their vehicle, breaking a taillight. Agents tackle him. A gun appears to be visible in his waistband. He is released without arrest.
The story concluded with melodrama.
What had happened on that frozen Minneapolis street was reverberating far beyond the city where Mr. Pretti died.
