Your Question, You Have Answered It

[Trigger warning for violence.]

Shaker Unree sends along this article from Sports Illustrated about the murder of University of Virginia lacrosse player Yeardley Love (about which I first wrote here). The article is headlined: Why did Yeardley Love have to die?

Have to die? Um. She didn't. That answers that question!

But let us grant that the headline was possibly intended to ask, simply: Why did she die?

It's a question that remains unanswered by the article below, which speaks of the "tragedy" with the same sort of mystified, confounded tone that is usually reserved for philosophical investigations of why a child is struck with cancer. The description across the browser bar reads: "The tragic story of Virginia lacrosse player Yeardley Love." The piece ends with references to "God's plan" and "senseless death."

No conclusion. No "because" to the "why." Only the equivalent of a bewildered shrug—despite the fact that a huge chunk of the story itself is dedicated to painting a portrait of alleged murderer George Huguely as a privileged, entitled, aggressive dude with an unchecked substance abuse problem who became obsessive with multiple women and presaged his murder of Love with threatening emails, texts, and at least one violent encounter witnessed by other lacrosse players.

And yet the question remains somehow unanswered. Or, rather, the dots remain unconnected.

That is merely the beginning of the myriad problems with this story. I will leave it to you to fisk in comments, but not before highlighting this jaw-dropping passage:

When they resumed working out on Thursday, nine days before the NCAA championships were to begin, the women were missing the speedy and clever defender whose exuberance had made some describe her as the heart of the team, and the men were without the burly midfielder who, ironically enough, had been described in game programs as one of the Cavaliers' fiercest attackers.

No. That is not irony. No.