I’m struggling against my initial reaction to this article by the Washington Post’s Mary Otto, which is to wonder why she left so many questions about the boy’s mother unanswered. But for starters, let’s admit (you, me, the Washington Post) that Mary Otto, Post staff writer, set out to use this story, to make a case for an indeterminate set of government solutions to the problem of neglected children who die of preventable diseases. Let’s at least admit that much.
Then we can move to the question of whether such crusades belong in a newspaper that is not The Nation, not an alt weekly, but rather a purportedly objective source of news. Deborah Howell’s been tackling some tough subjects lately. Maybe at some point she’ll tackle this one.
UPDATE: Ross Douthat asks, “[W]here was his Dad?” That’s the kind of unanswered question I was talking about.