A boat sank about 140 miles west of Ensenada on October 16. The Coast Guard rescued 16 and ended its search for an estimated 11 on October 18. RedState headlined the missing as “Would-Be Illegal Aliens”. An estimated 11 people were lost when a boat sank about 140 miles west of Ensenada on October 16. RedState’s headline gives them no names, no place and no search. It gives them a crime and a predator. The device is the hard word, the harsh name for a plain thing: the plain word is “people”, the one CBS 8 and Times of San Diego used. “Would-Be” concedes they never reached the United States, so the label convicts them of a crossing they did not make. Set “The Dark Side of Immigration” over a disappearance and the loss reads as a consequence. That leans on a habit of the mind: the world is fair, so whoever is harmed must have earned it. The tell is a crime word pinned to the missing in the headline about their loss. The record cannot carry that verdict. No one missing is named, no operator is named, no arrest is reported, and the Coast Guard said it did not know the nature of the vessel. RedState’s own page answers its headline. The place and the nationality wait for the third paragraph, after two about “Leftists”. The seventh says there is no official confirmation that sharks killed or consumed anyone. The hard word was not RedState’s alone: the Coast Guard’s statement used “illegal aliens” too, and the AP and San Diego outlets wrote “11 missing” instead. The page, by a “self-described World Famous Satirist”, ends selling VIP memberships at 60% off with the code FIGHT.
