pointlessness in october 1994, susan smith attracted national attention when she claimed that a carjacker had forced her from her mazda at gunpoint and then driven away, with her three-year-old and fourteen-month-old sons still strapped in the car. more than a week later, the nationwide hunt for the kidnapper and the two boys ended when smith confessed to investigators that she had deliberately driver the car into a lake and left her sons to drown. commentators made much of smith's claim that the carjacker was a black male; they charged that white racism led people to accept smith's story. but none of these commentators questioned the readiness of the press and the public to believe a story about a carjacker abducting two little boys and stealing a four-year-old compact car from a small town in south caroline. why would a carjacker do that? that's just the kind of thing they do. the fear of random violence means we no longer expect violence to be purposeful. when we hear about pamela basu dragged to her death by carjackers, or an innocent passerby shot in a drive-by, or a teenager killed over a pair of gym shoes, we say the violence is pointless, that it lacks any reasonable motivation. no one should die in a fight over gym shoes. when such tragedies occur - and they do - the very pointlessness of the deaths makes them seem even more tragic (o'neal 1997).
DEUS VULT