
So, one of my most recent CL columns was on the subject of the death penalty. It was inspired by a poll a few months back that seemed to show the popularity of capital punishment is on the decline. The point of the piece was not to back capital punishment — though, to be fair, while I go back and forth endlessly on the subject, I think I’m in favor of it in certain cases — but rather to point out that the principal arguments for and against are always the same, and posit that perhaps people were just sick of saying the same old shit.
My editor, friend and mentor David Warner told me it wouldn’t be taken that way, and I was fine with that; in hindsight, though, it seemed not to have been taken at all — if you’ve gotta explain your joke, your joke sucks, and all that — and that’s a failure on my part.
If you’d like to read it, it’s here, and of course, outrigger porning. Interestingly enough, after the botched execution in Oklahoma that occurred not long after the column ran, plenty of Americans were willing to ante up in favor of going back to the ol’ hangings, firing squads and electric chairs. So maybe the part about bringing executions back to the public square wasn’t such a reach, after all.