To humanize the whole experiment, the Herald has attached the column to a stock photo of a grimacing manchild they’ve affectionately nicknamed “Howie.” (I’ve always thought this was a sly hint to the “author’s” true identity: really, what adult human male would ever go by “Howie”?)

It’s all kind of adorable, really. Most of the time.

“Howie Carr” still has some bugs to work through, though, especially when it comes to trendspotting. Take this week’s big steaming memory dump:

 

It must be easy for Gov. Deval Patrick to ignore the carnage that the illegal aliens he supports so fervently are unleashing on the commonwealth.

Carnage, you say? That sounds pretty bad! How bad is it, “Howie”?

Another day, another person killed in Massachusetts by an illegal alien.

365 deaths per year in the Commonwealth attributable to undocumented defendants? This sounds like news! And it certainly would be, if it were true.

In support of this “fact,” Howietron 2011 provides three very disparate data points: the tragic slayings of an Ecuadoran woman and her baby by an undocumented Ecuadoran man in Brockton back in February, a vehicular homicide allegedly committed by an undocumented man in Milford last month, and the murder of Patricia Frois this week. (Howie also cites two of the hundreds of drunk-driving arrests made throughout Massachusetts in September, but these don’t do much for his death-per-day theory.) Like any wrongful death anywhere, these were terrible tragedies for the victims and their families–but they also only represent three of the hundreds of homicides known to occur in Massachusetts each year. And they were seven months apart. Meanwhile, natural-born Massachusetts natives continued to rape, beat, rob, and murder one another with the same abandon they have demonstrated since well before Beacon Hill was better-known as “Mount Whoredom.” (Actually, I’m genuinely surprised that one hasn’t been added to “Howie’s” lexicon yet.)

Anyway, here’s a fun game: try replacing every instance of “illegal alien” throughout “Howie’s” histrionic word-salad with your least favorite racial or ethnic slur! C’mon, try it out. I’ll give you a minute. (My favorite: “Another day, another person killed in Massachusetts by a ______.” “The _____s’s reign of terror” is also pretty good.) Woah, right? Right. Maybe we should stop using illegal as a noun.

This particular topic deserves a complete post in and of itself, but I have to point out here that no empirical study of the pertinent statistics has ever found anything but a lower rate of crime among the foreign-born population in the U.S. In fact, crime has actually decreased nationally in the past decade even as unauthorized immigration has exploded. (This really will be its own post sometime soon, but here’s a helpful overview from the Police Foundation (just one of many studies on this point)–although I should warn Howie fans that it contains thirty single-spaced pages of words and numbers.)

Crime–especially violent crime–is an equal-opportunity proposition for members of every race, religion, nationality, and social group. (I would invite you to spend a morning in any Boston-area district court if you want to see it for yourself, although I can assure you that you probably rather wouldn’t.) Blaming any particular group for the wrongdoing of a few of its members does nothing to help us to understand or address the underlying problems, and is closer to Klan tactics than anything resembling responsible journalism. It’s past time the Herald called its entire IT department in to take a closer look at “Howie’s” code.

(Oh, and I almost forgot: One of the most shockingly brutal multiple murders in recent memory in the Boston area was committed by a legal immigrant in an upscale Massachusetts suburb. But he was (kind of blindingly) white, and from a country that we really like–so, really, why mention it at all?)