The NYT public editor has "found that The Times sometimes writes about the administration’s point of view in The Times’s own voice..."

"...  rather than providing distance through clear attribution. This is a subtle thing, and individual examples are bound to seem unimportant, but consider, for example, the second paragraph of Friday’s lead story. (The boldface emphasis is mine.)"

The negative vote in Britain’s Parliament was a heavy blow to Prime Minister David Cameron, who had pledged his support to Mr. Obama and called on lawmakers to endorse Britain’s involvement in a brief operation to punish the government of President Bashar al-Assad for apparently launching a deadly chemical weapons attack last week that killed hundreds.

"With the use of the word 'apparently' – rather than directly attributing the administration, The Times seems to take the government’s position at face value."

ADDED: The quoted sentence is bad for another reason. There's way too much happening in that sentence ,and phrases end up saying things that are not intended and that we're supposed to straighten out in our heads. Specifically, Cameron didn't call for punishing Assad "for apparently launching" the attack.

Cameron called for punishment for launching the attack, which Cameron believes happened. You only impose the punishment if you're satisfied that the thing deserving punishment happened. It's a separate issue whether it happened. The writer of the sentence and the editor who accepted it realized they don't know, so they wedged "apparently" into the sentence.

That's a type of error that you see all the time, often with the word "allegedly," as in: "John Smith was charged with allegedly murdering Joe Blow." No! Smith was charged with murdering Blow. Whether he did it or not may be in question, but the charge is murder, not alleged murder. You could say that it is alleged that Smith murdered Blow, but no one is charged with alleged murder.

Quite aside from the problem of journalists psychically merging with the government, there's flat out bad writing. Write better sentences that say only exactly what you know. Words like "allegedly" and "apparently" can help, but pay attention to where you put them and whether you're creating new, unintended inaccuracies.

"Themself."

Is it a word yet?

This is a question that occurred to me while writing the first sentence of the last paragraph of the previous post. It seems like a horrible non-word, but it's going to have to become a word. The only question is when. I hate to tell you. Unless one is willing to make oneself look bizarrely stilted, one is going to need to resign oneself to "themself" achieving wordhood.

ADDED: Some people in the comments are going on about how "you" is used to refer to one person, because we don't have a singular second person pronoun, and "them" used in the singular is a solution to the problem of lacking a gender neutral third person pronoun to refer to one person. But that shows why "themself" will become a word: "Yourself" is already a word! You don't even notice how it feels wrong to say "yourselves" when you're talking about only one person. You instinctively know to change the "-selves" to "-self." The same thing will have to happen with "themselves."

Putin on Snowden: "If he wants to remain here... he should stop his work aimed at inflicting damage on our American partners..."

"... no matter how strange this may sound coming from me."

Meanwhile:

Admitting Ecuador made a 'mistake' in helping Snowden flee Hong Kong in the first place, [Ecuador's president Rafael Correa] appeared to backtrack on previous suggestions he was welcome, adding: "Are we responsible for getting him to Ecuador? It's not logical. The country that has to give him a safe conduct document is Russia."

Asked if he would like to meet the 30-year-old, he added: "Not particularly. He's a very complicated person. Strictly speaking, Mr Snowden spied for some time."

And there's a statement purporting to be from Snowden that pretty much can't have been written by Snowden. Find the tell:

"For decades the United States of America have been one of the strongest defenders of the human right to seek asylum."

ADDED: The tell is "have," the use of the plural verb with United States. American don't slip into that usage, though it's strictly correct if you're following the rules of grammar. The irregular form is second-nature to Americans. So does that mean Snowden couldn't have written that? No. Meade — in conversation just now — suggested that Snowden might have deliberately adopted the form that a non-American would use. But think what that means: He wants not to be American. That runs counter to a desire to refute the accusation that he is a traitor, but it's consistent with other statements of his that stress the world as a whole, including the term "human right" in the very sentence quoted above.

AND: Let's look at the whole text of his statement, which appears at the link. Right after the above-quoted sentence, we read:

Sadly, this right, laid out and voted for by the U.S. in Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is now being rejected by the current government of my country. 

He says "my country," but "the current government of," and the law he cites is transnational law. That sentence suggests that "the current government" is undeserving of loyalty and to be distinguished from "my country."

Snowden proceeds to call himself a "stateless person," because the current government has revoked his passport (and obstructed his "right to seek asylum"). He asserts that the current government is "afraid" of its own people:

It is afraid of an informed, angry public demanding the constitutional government it was promised — and it should be.

Let me paraphrase: If the American people had the information — which I risked my life to set free — they would see the current government as illegitimate.

The sign-off is:

Edward Joseph Snowden
Monday 1st July 2013

I don't think it's too American to write the date like that. We tend to write: July 1, 2013. If you wanted to go all U.S. Constitution about it, you could write: First Day of July in the Year of our Lord two thousand and Thirteen. But "Monday 1st July 2013"? To my eye, that's either written by a non-American or an American affecting a transnational style.

"Ask yourself: if I were a Chinese spy, why wouldn't I have flown directly into Beijing? I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now."

Edward Snowden answers questions, including "Edward, there is rampant speculation, outpacing facts, that you have or will provide classified US information to the Chinese or other governments in exchange for asylum. Have/will you?" His answer is such a conundrum...

This is a predictable smear that I anticipated before going public, as the US media has a knee-jerk "RED CHINA!" reaction to anything involving HK or the PRC, and is intended to distract from the issue of US government misconduct. Ask yourself: if I were a Chinese spy, why wouldn't I have flown directly into Beijing? I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now.

... that the questioner comes back and demands "a flat yes or no." He says:

No. I have had no contact with the Chinese government. Just like with the Guardian and the Washington Post, I only work with journalists.

I still don't know the complete answer to the first question, however, which asked if he will provide — that is, in the future — classified information to the Chinese.
He gives the flat "no," but I see that the followup question was "Regarding whether you have secretly given classified information to the Chinese government, some are saying you didn't answer clearly - can you give a flat no?" That refers only to the past: have you given info. He says "no" only to that, and the sentence after the "no" also refers only to the past. The next sentence is in the present tense: I only work with journalists. There is no flat no about what he might do in the future. Even assuming that he's scrupulous about truth-telling now — we can infer that he wasn't scrupulous about the promises he made to gain security clearance — he has not made an assertion about the future.

Also "I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now" could be read as a clue that he's making things up, since there is no such beast as a phoenix. I check "phoenix" at Urban Dictionary:

3. Phoenix      128 up, 98 down
Coolest person you will ever meet. They're smart, funny, and extremely good-looking. In a nutshell they're the one everyone wants to be friends with and date.

You could pet that. (Miscellaneous: Urban Dictionary definitions #1 and #2 relate to the city in Arizona. Factoid discovered in Googling "phoenix": "Image of Jesus appears on floor tile at Phoenix airport... The smudge in Terminal 3 of Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport has become a pilgrimage site in recent weeks, as visitors have come to see for themselves whether the Lord and Savior flies coach or first-class.")

Back to Snowden. Asked why he didn't stay in this country, he expresses complete mistrust for the legal system:

[T]he US Government...  immediately and predictably destroyed any possibility of a fair trial at home, openly declaring me guilty of treason and that the disclosure of secret, criminal, and even unconstitutional acts is an unforgivable crime. That's not justice, and it would be foolish to volunteer yourself to it if you can do more good outside of prison than in it.

Perhaps another way of putting this — without calling the legal system corrupt — would be to admit that you know you have committed serious crimes and the evidence is so clear that you are nearly certain that you will be convicted in a perfectly fair trial.

The final clause can stand as an independent opinion: Even with full justice, it's foolish to volunteer to go to prison if you think you can do more good outside of prison. In classic civil disobedience, one accepts the law's punishment. Volunteering to go to prison is portrayed as admirable and courageous, and not foolish. He is calling Henry David Thoreau and Martin Luther King, Jr. foolish, except to the extent that he's got a loophole: The question whether you do more good in prison than out of prison.

For Thoreau and King, perhaps being imprisoned does good — it's an important gesture. But for Snowden — he's done the cost benefit analysis and he can do more good if he stays free. That strikes me as ludicrous, but there's also the out of saying you're not doing old-fashioned civil disobedience. You're redefining it for a new era.

An ambiguous headline that reveals too much about us: "Kim Kardashian's Pregnancy Fails."

The quote is a teaser, found at the bottom of another article under the "More from Our Partners" heading. I don't even see the ambiguity. I read "pregnancy" as a noun and "fails" as a verb, and think it should mean that the woman has miscarried, but realize it could mean that her pregnancy was supposed to have some cultural meaning or some impact on her popularity, but the intended effect has not occurred.

Clicking the link, I see that "pregnancy" is an adjective and "fails" is a noun. The linked article is: "Fashion Fails: Kim Kardashian's Worst Pregnancy Looks." That is, absolutely nothing has happened, but there is one more entry in the endless series of opportunities to see what is happening to women's bodies.

Admittedly, that is the most interesting subject in the history of the world and the meaning of everything, but still....

Scrutinizing the logic of Obama's to-do list.

Email, received just now, from Obama with the subject line "My to-do list."

Ann --

I keep a to-do list in my desk.

It's ambitious, but you and I didn't set out to do easy things.

As long as I can count on you to be a part of this, we will find a way to make progress on all of it -- continuing to create good-paying jobs, fixing our broken immigration system, finding a common-sense way to reduce gun violence in this country, and more.

No president can do it alone.

Say you're in:

http://my.barackobama.com/Are-You-In

There's a lot of work to do -- thanks for doing your part.

Barack

So... as long as you can count on me to be a part of this, we — not just you — fill find a way to make progress on all of it. I'm contemplating the consequences of my noncontribution. Sounds like he'll still make progress on some of it. If I do contribute, he — or, that is, we — will make progress on all of it. Yet still, it will only be progress, not actual goal achievement. He's cagey about what he's promising in there with his guilt-tripping.

Also, in case you didn't get enough of this topic a month ago: He said "good-paying jobs."

ADDED: That email makes me want to quote Bob Dylan:

Half of the people can be part right all of the time
Some of the people can be all right part of the time
But all of the people can’t be all right all of the time
I think Abraham Lincoln said that

Blood and grammar.

1. Questionable sentence in yesterday's Daily News: "But a bride-to-be who stabbed her fiancé in the heart just hours before they walked down the aisle has now been convicted of his murder."

2. I've read about a murder that happened long ago in which a woman was stabbed in the heart with a long pin, and because she neither felt it — perhaps because of a tight corset — or saw the blood — which oozed slowly into her dark-colored dress — she went about her activities for many hours before succumbing.

"As frustratingly late as it was — Mr. Obama could and should have said years ago much of what he said today..."

"... there is no underestimating the importance of that statement."

So say the editors of The New York Times.

No underestimating?! What?

So if I say Obama's speech is the least significant thing ever said in the history of mankind, I'm still not underestimating it?

The editorial ends:

There have been times when we wished we could hear the right words from Mr. Obama on issues like these, and times we heard the words but wondered about his commitment. Today was not either of those moments.

There have been times when I have read the Times and wondered why the Times was putting things in those words and times when I have read the words out loud in an effort to hear whether these words were the right words. Today was both of those moments.

ADDED: Language Log has a post "Overestimating, underestimating, whatever."

It started when a friend, in conversation, said something like "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people. [pause] Or overestimating. Whatever."

"Who is so devoted to the park, and to the rules of grammar..."

"... that he or she would break the law to correct these mistakes?"

Over-anti-hyper-correction?

Or: Over-assuming Obama must be right?

A dialogue about grammar (arising out of the discussion of "good-paying" and "well-paying" that began in a blog post called "Speaking of my stream of consciousness, blowjobs, and 'the Golden Age of Male Rage'").

ADDED: Obama said "good-paying" twice in the October 16, 2012 presidential debate:

Now, the most important thing we can do is to make sure that we are creating jobs in this country. But not just jobs, good paying jobs. Ones that can support a family....

So... on wind energy, when Governor Romney says "these are imaginary jobs." When you've got thousands of people right now in Iowa, right now in Colorado, who are working, creating wind power with good-paying manufacturing jobs...

Speaking of my stream of consciousness, blowjobs, and "the Golden Age of Male Rage"...

"Surprise! Psycho Mother of Boston Bombers Also on Terror Watch List. Kind of a blow to Nina Burleigh’s sophomoric pyschosexual theory, though. Burleigh, for those who have forgotten, is the reporter who said she’d be happy to give Bill Clinton a blowjob in thanks for his efforts to keep abortion legal. Form your own psychosexual theories if you wish...."

I'm reading Instapundit and thinking there's a lot of rich material for me, but guess where I get sidetracked?

1. Blow to Nina Burleigh... blowjob from Nina Burleigh... interesting double use of "blow," hmm, I wonder what the etymology of "blow" is and let's check out the OED, oh wait, didn't I do a language riff on "blowjob" before?... No. That's not it.

2. Psycho Mother revelation... I already called bullshit on this lady's theatrical posings and yammerings, where's that old link?... No. That's not it.

3. Blowjobs in thanks for abortion rights...  blowjobs are another way to avert pregnancy... if women were truly enthusiastic about blowjobs, we wouldn't need abortion rights... but Burleigh's apparently not enthusiastic about blowjobs, because she's offering one in payment to Bill Clinton for the favor that he's done in keeping abortion legal as opposed to seeing giving and getting a blowjob as an even exchange, complete in itself.... No. That's not it.

4. Instapundit misspelled "psychosexual" the first time he used it. Nah. I'm just noticing that now.

5. I clicked through to the "sophomoric" theory, referring to "the Golden Age of Male Rage," the 3rd paragraph of which begins: "Curiously, these guys belong to the gender with all the physical strength and most of the well-paying jobs in the world." Well-paying jobs? Isn't it good-paying jobs? I ask Meade: "Which is correct 'well-paying jobs' or 'good-paying jobs'?" He says "good-paying." Yes, that's what I think, but how do we know that? We spend 10 minutes trying to explain the reason, and I find this discussion at UsingEnglish.com, which doesn't resolve the question to my liking but includes some choice Obama-blaming:

... I recently saw an Obama ad in which he uses the phrase "good-paying jobs," as well as a WSJ article where the phrase was used. It seems that whenever Obama uses a phrase, or pronunciation (like divissive, rather than divisive), everyone thinks he's right and starts using it.

It's true: Obama says "good-paying." My instinct says that's right (and not because Obama's saying something makes it seem right), but I can't articulate exactly why. I know how to say why "well-paying jobs" is correct: paying is an adjective, well modifies paying, and you use an adverb to modify an adjective. But I think that's incorrect. You wouldn't say "That's a highly paying job," would you? You would, obviously, say: "I am well paid," not "I am good paid." But you'd say: "That's good pay," not "That's well pay." I think the answer I'm looking for has something to do with constructing "good-paying" out of "good pay." Maybe we should start the colloquialism "good-pay jobs" to get us out of this jam.

So there's your answer. That's where the mind of Althouse went with this material. Feel free to discuss Terror Mom and The Blowjobs.

6. Speaking of my stream of consciousness, blowjobs, and Burleigh's "the Golden Age of Male Rage," I've always loved George Carlin's response to his mother's threat that when his father gets home "he's gonna read you the riot act": "Tell him I already read it myself. And I didn't like it, either; I consider it wordy and poorly thought out. He wants to read me something, how about 'The Gentlemen's Guide to the Golden Age of Blowjobs'?"

7. If you think this post wordy and poorly thought out, reel out your psychosexual theories in the comments.

8. [ADDED] I've become convinced that both "good-paying" and "well-paying" are wrong. What is needed is not an adjective (good) or an adverb (well) but a noun as in "money-paying job." The reason "good-paying job" sounds better is, I think, because it's an elision of "good-money-paying job."

NYT's Gail Collins endeavors to take down Ted Cruz.

This is about Cruz's recent colloquy with Dianne Feinstein. Excerpts:

Later, Feinstein would tell CNN that she felt Cruz was being “somewhat arrogant,” which seemed like an understatement. Even in an age of political polarization, there apparently is still an unwritten rule against calling someone “a stupendously irritating twit” on national TV....

Do you think, people, that this [incessant self-reference] is a key to the stupendous impact the Tea Party continues to have on Congress, even now that it’s proved itself to be a loser when it comes to elections? If you combine a lack of a sense of humor with an absence of humility and then stir in a cup of self-righteousness, you are definitely not working on a recipe for cooperative achievement.

I want to make 5 points, briefly.

1. Somebody get Gail Collins a thesaurus. For "stupendous," try "astonishing." It's got that huffy, aghast tone you seem to be looking for. I know, "stupendous" is tempting because it gives the feeling that you're calling your target stupid, but when you find something "stupendous," you're actually confessing to stupor on your own part, and literally, if you are in a stupor, you are stupid.

2. This woman-defending-woman column ends with a recipe metaphor. Is that good gender politics? It resonates with what I think is Collins's effort to make us see this interplay between 2 U.S. Senators in terms of a man patronizing a woman.

3. Cruz's questions were about the security of our constitutional rights: Why did humor belong in that recipe?

4. Where was this "self-righteousness"? Collins's evidence is that Cruz used the phrases “My... point is," "in my opinion," “I would point out," and "In my view." This phobia about first-person-singular pronouns is silly. It's used against Obama all the time. What does Collins think of all those right-wing bloggers who will inform you about how many times Obama says "I" in a given speech? I'll bet she thinks it's... stupid. I certainly do.

5. Cruz also referred to his role as counsel in Heller (the Supreme Court's biggest 2d Amendment case) — another thing Collins considered self-referential and self-righteous. But Collins began her column building up Dianne Feinstein's stature because of her encounter with the fatally wounded Harvey Milk and George Moscone many years ago. Does personal experience lend weight to political opinion or not? Feinstein said: "I walked in, I saw people shot. I’ve looked at bodies that have been shot with these weapons. I’ve seen the bullets that implode." That's at least as self-referential and self-righteous as Cruz's statement that he was not "unfamiliar" with Heller given that he worked on the case.

ADDED: "A recipe for cooperative achievement." Who ordered the cooperative achievement? At the gun control restaurant, Cruz folds the menu and sips his ice water.

"Pope Francis put his humility on display during his first day as pontiff Thursday, stopping by his hotel to pick up his luggage and pay the bill himself..."

Interesting phrase from the Associated Press: "put his humility on display." I was feeling warm-hearted about the Pope's going back to the hotel to get his luggage and pay the bill, but that phrase had a distancing effect. So he made a show of humility.

So how does the AP go about informing us that the Pope only has one lung? "Pope's 1 Lung Shouldn't Affect Duties." Is that casting skepticism on his capacity for the work — which AP tells us includes "daunting challenges ahead ranging from the church sex abuse scandal to reinvigorating the flock"?

By the way, just in terms of usage, what do you think of "Pope's 1 Lung Shouldn't Affect Duties." Isn't it the lack of lung #2 that's the problem? Suggested correction: Pope's 1-Lungedness Shouldn't Affect Duties.

"Gatsby, pale as death, with his hands plunged like weights in his coat pockets, was standing in a puddle of water glaring tragically into my eyes."

The most interesting thing about today's "Gatsby" sentence is the use of plunged for the action of the hands into the pockets, when the feet are in a puddle of water. A puddle isn't deep, and Gatsby is just standing in the puddle. He can't be plunged into a mere puddle, but then again, his pockets are not bodies of water, so the plunging into the pockets is metaphorical.

The puddle is shallow and the pockets are not deep water, and Gatsby's hands aren't really weights. They're just like weights. But if you were weighted and plunged into deep water, you'd be in great danger of dying, and, indeed, Gatsby is pale as death. Drowning could be called a tragedy, and Gatsby is glaring tragically into the narrator's eyes.

Maybe you think this sentence is overwritten. Pale as death is a cliché and it's sort of redundant with glaring tragically.  Adverb adversaries would say you don't need tragically when you've already got glaring. Verbosity prigs might say if the narrator is able to see that Gatsby is glaring, it's tedious to go to the trouble to tack on into my eyes. And into my eyes is kind of a slow way to coast to an ending when you're trying to be this dramatic, what with death and weights and tragically dragging us down.

But maybe if we could escape from this isolated sentence — which we can't, in the Gatsby project as arbitrarily defined by me — we would see reason behind the seemingly weak into my eyes. Gatsby is desperate for something that must come, very specifically, from the narrator. Save me!

AND: Did "a puddle of water glaring tragically into my eyes" bother you?

"They were both in white, and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house."

I decided to pluck something from Chapter 1 for today's entry in the "Great Gatsby" project. I randomly selected the sentence that appears above. You must believe me that it is indeed random, and yet someone had just emailed me to say he liked the Gatsby project and:

When I was a Harvard Freshman in 58-59, I took the required freshman English class and the instructor was an expert on Gatsby....

At one point while we were reading Gatsby for the class, he remarked "Have you noticed that whenever you see Daisy in the novel, she is wearing white?"

Now, how can my correspondent believe that I randomly picked a sentence with 2 women in white? But, on my purest honor, I did. We're focusing on sentences, so I don't know or care whether Daisy was one of the 2 women. I won't presume, though I will presume that the 2 entities known as "They" are women, given that they are wearing dresses. We must bring our knowledge of what is possible and what is probable to the enterprise of reading, even as we bear down on an isolated sentence. One or both of "them" might be a transvestite male (or a nonhuman), but I'm going to presume 2 women (or girls).

The "they" is perplexing in another, more disturbing way, because it reappears halfway through in "as if they had just been blown back." We're given a simile that asks us to picture the women, in their white dresses, flying around the house at some earlier moment. They — the women — look like they just landed, as their dresses are "rippling and fluttering" from a recent "short flight." But to say "their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back" is to create ambiguity, the possibility that the "they" was "their dresses," and we might feel called upon to picture the dresses, by themselves, flying around the house before getting blown back onto the 2 erstwhile naked women. The flying-around-the-house image is fantastical, so we can't tap our our knowledge of what is possible and what is probable, and yet, somehow we know it was the women in their dresses who seem as if they'd just flown around the house and gotten blown back in.

I think the problem of 2 possible antecedents for the second "they" is a writing error, and this Gatsby project is premised on the greatness of the sentences. I hate to be the one to have to say a good editing eye would have seen that ambiguity, but the greatness of the sentence-writing doesn't require a complete absence of error, and the logic of the sentence precludes the dresses flying around the house on their own because we can't picture the dresses getting back on the women without losing the "rippling and fluttering" action caused by the flight and landing. So enough of that. Stop picturing naked women waiting while their dresses fly around the house.

It was the women, so magical and light, like birds or butterflies, that flew around the house. They could fly, but they didn't fly far, only around the house which they got blown back into. These women don't have much ambition or power on their own. They are housebound, even though they can fly. They do an orbit of the house and then a breeze sweeps them back in. But here they are, so pretty in their fluttery white dresses. And of course, they only look as if they'd taken that charmingly domestic flight. The truth is they are sitting together in the house, and they haven't been going anywhere. But there is a breeze, a breeze that might blow a butterfly into the house, and it ripples their flimsy dresses.

"Is 'God, guns, and gays' losing its peril for Democrats?"

A strange way to phrase a question, in this Greg Sargent column. What does this stunning lack of parallelism reveal about the Mind of Sargent?

Indeed, I’m cautiously hopeful that this time around, Democrats will overcome their typical skittishness on guns. ... [T]he politics of this issue have changed: Democrats are less reliant on conservative, rural, gun-owning voters than at any time in the history of the party, due to Dem gains among socially moderate suburbanites, and ongoing demographic shifts that continue to boost the vote share among minorities and young voters  — all voter groups who may not see “gun rights” as a potent issue.

You know those "rural" folk, who cling to their guns and religion. Maybe they can be ignored by Democrats who have other blocs out of which to build victories. But to throw "gays" on the list... well, that's not something those horrible peasants cling to like guns and religion. It's something they're supposedly repelled by, perhaps something like the way those socially moderate suburbanites are imagined to have an aversion to God and guns.

I guess Sargent might love alliteration. GGG. But someone ought to tell him that — coming from a very conspicuous gay guy — GGG stands for "good, giving, and game":  ("good in bed," "giving equal time and equal pleasure," and "game for anything — within reason'").

And some people think "Guns, God and Government" — the work of a not-quite-earless guy with a lady's name.

What does GGG mean to you? I'm thinking, for me, grammar, graphomania, and...

"Jovan Belcher’s grieving teammates on the Kansas City Chiefs refused to blame guns for his horrifying murder-suicide."

So begins an article at The Daily News. Interesting construction "his... murder-suicide." Normally, when you say "his murder," the possessive pronoun refers to the murder victim, not the murder." "[H]is horrifying murder-suicide" seems to strain to hide Belcher's agency in killing 2 human beings. One senses that The Daily News would like to do the very thing the teammates aren't doing: blame the guns.

"If you have daughters, you should (have a gun),” Chiefs defensive lineman Shaun Smith said Monday. “You have to protect yourself. You work so hard to get to where you at, I'll be damned if I’ll just let someone take it from me.”

If you acquire wealth, you become a theft target!

Linebacker Brandon Siler, who had Thanksgiving dinner with Belcher, also had no problems with guns.

“Well, a majority of people own one, especially in the places where they're legal. Most of the time they're for self defense or sport,” he said.

Speaking of self-defense and looking at the picture at the link, showing the huge size difference between Belcher and the woman he killed, even if your concern is domestic violence, why would you blame guns? There are any number of ways he could have killed her. A gun would have been the one way she could have defended herself.

And, by the way, I'm not swallowing the story that Belcher traveled from the murder scene — his home — to the football facility for the purpose of thanking his employers for giving him "a chance" in life. That's management's story, and it works as PR. It essentially requests that we sympathize with the murderer. I invite you into a thought experiment: Why else might Belcher have relocated?

With a theory of my own, I asked Meade that question yesterday, and he said something that hadn't occurred to me. Belcher shot his Kasandra Perkins in front of his mother. He had an audience. And he sought out an audience —  head coach Romeo Crennel and general manager Scott Pioli — for the suicide. He chose spectators for his self-killing. Having horrified his mother, he went for new spectator-victims, individuals most likely to suffer to see him die. If he thanked them, he was saying you've invested your work and your trust in me and now watch me destroy that.

My theory was different. After the murder, Belcher thought: What do I do now? How can I get out of this? He went to management in the hope that they could bail him out somehow. He was in a terrible jam. Come on, enfold me, protect me. You've got all those ingenious defensive plays on the field, do something for me now. Protect your investment in me. You've done so much for me already. You've given me a chance in life, and a chance is what I really need now. You pulled me up out of nothing. If anyone can help me now it's you.