Heath Ledger.
Now before you assume anything and quickly skip to another issue, hold on a few seconds and let me speak (type).
Today, the leading story on the Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, and undoubtedly hundreds of other homepages was the death of American actor Heath Ledger. Today, on January 22, 2008, Ledger was found in a Manhattan apartment with sleeping pills near his body. Shocking to so many is how such a young life was ended with no obvious indications that this might happen.
Wake up, America! As we weep for the death of one actor who was little more than a publicity magnet, there are thousands of people dying worldwide, and we don't even care. The average life expectancy of Swaziland, according to the CIA Factbook, is 32.23 years, with fourteen other nations whose average life expectancy does not exceed 45 years. When is the last time Yahoo! or AOL featured something about the masses dying daily there? I wouldn't be too surprised if the answer is never.
"But that's all the way across the globe, and Heath Ledger was close to home, an Australian working in the United States who died in the Big Apple. This news hits close to home." Does it?
Today, the United States military lost its first soldier in the new Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) armored trucks that the Army has been outfitting itself with for heightened protection against roadside bombs, RPGs and other IEDs. Sure, this story was widely reported, but I quickly noticed that the death of this one soldier, who bravely served his country with his life and, chances are, died at a younger age than did Ledger.
"All right, all right. So we messed up once."
Once? Data recorded up to the middle of January 2008 put the US military casualties in Iraq at 3,940. Truth be told, I haven't seen much mourning in the media about them, unless it's for some political motives. A few months ago I saw a picture from an American outpost in Iraq that perfectly illustrates my frustration:
and in the tabloids."
1 comment:
Well said. The quote really summarizes what is going on right now. It's almost pitiful what type of stories grab the public's attention. With all the deaths in the war, the only ones that get attention are the ones that the government uses to further a political cause.
However, this reminds me of a quote Stalin once said: "The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic." It's similar with the dog-random person analogy we used in class... people tend to sympathize and be more concerned with people they know, and in this case, Heath Ledger rather than all those other people who die of AIDS. I know this seems unreasonable, but can we blame this on human nature?
Post a Comment