Wednesday, 05 January 2011 13:10

Written by Chad Hermann

(or, a lament of heather arnet)

This was going to be one last post about the lessons of the firing of Michael Haywood. It was going to lament, with multiple excerpts and examples, a disconcerting eagerness among the general public to follow the University of Pittsburgh’s lead, rush headlong to judgment, and presume a man guilty, or at least disposable, simply because he has been accused of a most unsavory crime.

I was, in metaphorical short, going to wonder in what country we live. But when I awoke this morning and read the PG’s opinion pages, I began to wonder in what world we live.

It was bad enough, and hard enough to keep my head from exploding, when I read the PG Editorial Board’s contention that Pitt would have sent a message, by keeping Mr. Haywood, that a claim of domestic violence is not serious. That grown, ostensibly wise men and women — however well-intentioned, and however hell-bent on proving to the city, the region, the world, and maybe even themselves that they stand firmly against the very real horrors of domestic violence — should make no distinction between a claim and a proof, between an accusation and a conviction, between the presumption of innocence, the punishment of guilt, and the patience of justice to decide the difference, was as depressing as it was disappointing.

But worse, and far more infuriating, was to read the day’s lead letter to the editor, in which Heather Arnet, Chief Executive Officer of the Women and Girls Foundation of Southwest Pennsylvania, sees the editorial board’s Kafkaesque pronouncement and raises it to new, Orwellian heights.

The first sentence...

We applaud University of Pittsburgh Chancellor Mark Nordenberg's recent decision to fire football coach Michael Haywood shortly after his arrest related to a felony domestic abuse charge in Indiana.

...sets the tone quite nicely, falling into lock, jackbooted step with all the rest of the judgment rushers who believe that a man accused is a man more than guilty enough. But it does nothing to prepare you — and yet, I’m not sure anything could prepare you — for the rampant absurdity of the next sentence:

Domestic abuse is the number two killer of women in this country.

This is, to put it charitably, a crock. A farce. A fiction. A folly. A flapdoodle. So much bunk, baloney, and balderdash that it’s an insult to hokum, hooey, and horsefeathers.

It’s just not true.

In fact, it’s not even close to true. And it’s kind of an outrage that it was printed, unchallenged and obviously un-fact-checked, in the pages of the PG.

Ms. Arnet is, of course, entitled to her own agenda. And to the fantasies that follow from it. She is not, however, entitled to her own facts.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the top ten Leading Causes of Death in Females in the United States for 2006 — the most recent year for which the center has compiled and published full statistics on its web site — were:

1. Heart Disease (25.8%)
2. Cancer (22%)
3. Stroke (6.7%)
4. Chronic Lower Respiratory Diseases (5.3%)
5. Alzheimer’s Disease (4.2%)
6. Accidents (3.5%)
7. Diabetes (3%)
8. Influenza and Pneumonia (2.5%)
9. Kidney Disease (1.9%)
10. Septicemia (1.5%)

You will notice, of course, that ALL assaults and homicides, much less ones resulting just from domestic abuse, do not even crack the Top 10.   

[For the record, and because someone or ones will inevitably try to twist my point: this does not say, and I am not saying, that domestic violence is not a problem, nor that there are not far too many deaths from domestic abuse in the United States and everywhere else. It merely says, and proves, that Ms. Arnet’s claim is a load of waffle.]

These rankings, and the percentages associated with them, stayed remarkably consistent across the first half of the last decade. As did, according to FBI homicide reports, the numbers of women killed by domestic violence in the U.S.:

2000 – 1,238
2001 – 1,194
2002 – 1,193
2003 – 1,163
2004 – 1,159

Average those numbers, round up, and say 1,200 per year. (The ten-year average, from 1996-2005, was 1,216. So we're right in the ballpark.)  

The number of all female deaths in the U.S. in 2007, according to the CDC, was 1,219,744. The number in 2008 was 1,246,297. These numbers, too, stayed remarkably consistent during the last decade. Average those numbers, round down, and say 1,200,000 per year.

That makes the math pretty simple. At least for people who bother to do it, and then to pay attention to it.

With 1,200 deaths out of a total of 1.2 million deaths, domestic violence causes, on average, roughly .1% of all female deaths in the United States.

Septicemia, you’ll remember — which comes in at #10, and which you probably have to look up to know what it is  — causes 1.5%. Or, roughly 15 times the number caused by domestic violence.

Cancer — which is the real #2, and which is annually closing in on #1 — causes 22%. Or, roughly 220 times the number caused by domestic violence.

So, just to recap:

Cancer – 264,000
Domestic Violence – 1,200

The numbers are so close, you can see how Ms. Arnet might have gotten them confused. I mean, what’s a little factor of 220 among friends and advocates and peddlers of inveterate poppycock?

The difference here is so staggering, the statistical reality so far removed from Ms. Arnet's rhetorical fantasy, that it renders the rest of her letter — and, really, until she issues a correction or retraction, all of her utterances ever — moot. Laughable. Apocryphal. As easily dismissed as anything that might pass from the lips of Dick Cheney, the keyboard of Sarah Palin, or the meadow of The Boy Who Cried Wolf.

At the end of her letter, Ms. Arnet lauds Pitt Chancellor Nordenberg for taking a strong stand in regard to protecting the codes of conduct of our community and setting a better example for our children.

It is clear from her first sentence, and from the — what, exactly, shall we call it? — lie/falsehood/ignorance/deception/misinformation/statistical horse hockey of her second, that the example she would set for our children includes presuming guilt, rushing to judgment, ignoring facts, distorting reality, forgoing justice, and/or the wanton, scurrilous pleasures of just going ahead and making stuff up. 

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