Nov 22, 2013

Eyes on Texas: Alligators and Armstrong

A roundup of news, columns and features about the state, from media around the world.

The New York Daily News has dredged up the story of Joseph Ball, a myth of a man who allegedly killed his girlfriends and fed them to his pet alligators in the late ’30s. The Daily News says this fable is not quite true. A friend of Ball’s told police at the time that Ball had indeed killed his girlfriend, cut her up and stuffed her body in a barrel. Ball told another girlfriend to look at the sunset and then shot her in the head, according the News. But there was no evidence he fed them to his alligators. Reporting Texas has one question: Why this story now?

The Guardian reports that Austin cyclist Lance Armstrong reached a deal with Acceptance Insurance, which sued him for $3 million in performance bonuses it paid him from 1991 to 2001. The Guardian says this means Armstrong will not have to give sworn testimony about his drug use. In interviews, Armstrong admitted using performance-enhancing drugs, but has not provided sworn testimony.

New York Times editorial writer Lawrence Downes offers kudos to UT for denouncing a “Catch and Illegal Immigrant” game proposed by the UT-Austin chapter of Young Conservatives of Texas. Downes wrote, “It’s good when responsible parties denounce the hateful idiocy on the fringe of the immigration debate, especially in a border state like Texas, whose Latino roots are deep and wide, and where cross-border migration is a matter of life and death.”