Est, Est, Est

“A policeman called the deaths of six females and three males, all believed to be children of Marcus Wesson, the largest mass killing in the history of Fresno, Calif.” NYT

I should certainly hope so. Just how many mass killings have there been in Fresno?

The media’s obsession with superlatives has infected us all. We can no longer have just a heavy snowfall or rainfall or whatever – it has to be the heaviEST since… whatever date you can find. The biggEST terrorist attack in Europe since WWII. The longEST winning streak since 1997. The warmEST day since last Tuesday. Which makes every event seem more dramatic than most events actually are.

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