The lesson in Sean Taylor's death

What happened

Miami area police are treating the shooting death of Washington Redskins football player Sean Taylor as the result of a random burglary, although a childhood friend said the killer could have been one of many enemies Taylor had on the streets of Miami. (AP in The Boston Globe, free registration)

What the commentators said

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Some people “coldly” blamed Taylor for his own death, said Eugene Robinson in The Washington Post (free registration), saying that Taylor’s past run-ins with the law made it clear the killer was someone from the “cesspool of dysfunction” in which he chose to swim. Now that police are calling the shooting a “random” act, let’s hope everyone can grieve for Taylor as simply a young man whose life was cut short—instead of a “character” whose past caught up to him.

Open your eyes, said Jason Whitlock in FOXSports.com. “When shots are fired and a black man hits the pavement, there's every statistical reason to believe another black man pulled the trigger.” Taylor was the latest victim of this “Black Klan,” those violent young men whose mentality, which Taylor embraced, serves the same purpose as the white version—keeping black men “uneducated, outside the mainstream and six feet deep.”

Taylor’s death was a wake-up call , said Jeff Legwold in the Rocky Mountain News, but not for the reason you might think. He was the second pro football player to be gunned down this year, and two pro basketball players were victims of home invasions this summer, too. No one knows for sure who killed Taylor, but “a high-profile league, filled with high-profile people,” will definitely have to deal with the reality that its players can become “targets.”