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My new title: indecent person

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  • My new title: indecent person

    Also, no doubt, "insensitive bitch" ...

    I asked -- and might I say I asked VERY politely -- why the death of one of the Kennedy clan members (drug overdose) is seen as major news, when middle-class and poor people die of overdoses on a daily basis and don't merit even a sound byte on the six o'clock news.

    I made a point of adding that I am not in any way trying to say that her friends and family are not grieving her loss.

    The first response included a nice little dig about how "of course decent people" would be mourning her death.

    We're not talking about one of the clan who's in politics and thus already in the news, as with JFK and Robert. This girl was, to all intents and purposes, a private citizen. So why would I be mourning her death? I never heard of her before today. And I'm damn sure those who DID know her ARE mourning her death, very deeply.

    The responder also said the Kennedy family has already had "more than its share of tragedy." Um, okay ... by whose estimate? Are we now quantifying the amount of misery any given family suffers? I'm sure the family of the six-year-old who was shot to death at Gilroy would feel that have had "more than their fair share" of tragedy. I did not say this last part, but I'm sure there will be further responses in which I am taken to task for my lack of sensitivity and I will have to decide whether to go with it.

    At this point I'm thinking that I probably won't. I don't really want to escalate this ONLY because the comments are on the thread of someone whom I follow and whose editorials and commentaries I highly respect, and I don't want him feeling that he has to use a ban-hammer on me.

    I am old enough to remember JFK's assassination, and Robert Kennedy's assassination, so it is not a lack of history on my part. I can't say I was devastated by JFK's assassination, as I was only 8 years old at the time. I remember my grandmother and some of her friends sitting around the television and crying (I should add we are ... were ... all Canadians). I had no real idea of what was going on but I did understand that something awful had happened.

    It was quite different with Robert's assassination.

    Somebody else had earlier made a comment similar to mine but then went off on a rant about the Kennedy family's "criminality" and how some of their tragedies were self-inflicted. I'm not touching any of that with the proverbial ten-foot pole. Nor did I speculate as to how or why she got into drugs in the first place, because (1) it's none of my damn business anyway, and (2) it is, sadly, irrelevant now.
    Insults are the arguments employed by those who are in the wrong.
    ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  • #2
    First I heard about it and still not gonna waste any energy worrying about it. I care about someone related to famous people dying as any other stranger. Sucks but it's life. Nothing worth getting in a tizzy over.
    Violence has resolved more conflicts than anything else. The contrary opinion that violence doesn't solve anything is merely wishful thinking at its worst. - Starship Troopers

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    • #3
      So this is tangential but it kind of reminds me of what happened when Neal Degrasse Tyson tweeted statistics.

      Here's what he tweeted:
      On average, across any 48hrs, we also loseā€¦

      500 to Medical errors
      300 to the Flu
      250 to Suicide
      200 to Car Accidents
      40 to Homicide via Handgun

      Often our emotions respond more to spectacle than to data.


      I think the moralizing at the end is what actually got him in trouble, but it fits with what you're saying. Why do those 250 suicides, 40 homicides, or people killed by medical practitioners not matter?

      I don't care about the Kennedy's or The Queen or most other public figures. I do tend to mourn certain artists or athletes if it happens suddenly. But we all die. I guess I don't begrudge someone who follows the Kennedy's as long as they don't begrduge me for not caring.

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