By now many of you know about this story. Note that the men killed and trapped in the mine are miners, not men. Oh, they are both, yes. But in this article, they get referred to as miners, or a man speaking who is a miner gets referred to as such, 12 times in the article. "Man" or "men" is used only once, when the trapped miners (or men) are referred to on page 2. And as for the dead mine-explosion victims, well, they are referred to only as miners.
Keeping up? I hope so! This is the same kind of thing that was discussed here (the "bonus clip" points this out wonderfully). Men as a class of person have become such an unsympathetic group that when men are the victims of some kind of work or other tragedy, the press and others refer to them by their occupation, or relationship status, or something else. Anything but "man". "Man" is a dirty word used to refer, almost exclusively, to bad men: criminals, or men doing things others disapprove of in some way, etc. Good men are not men. They are husbands, fathers, miners, self-sacrificing heroes of some kind, ie, men giving of themselves to women and children or others yet even at the expense of their own lives, but yet rarely if ever referred to as MEN.
Well, that'd be a such dirty word to use on such nice... guys... now wouldn't it?
