First, let me make it clear that I am not defending the government or the “media” I am just adding another point of view.  Also, I want to say that R. A. Earl also has some good points, however I disagree with the statement that a buslod of deaths makes the news more often than a single person dying.  I address this farther down in a way but I’m going to touch it now as well.  In media terms: One death is a tragedy, a thousand deaths is a statistic.  On the news we saw 9/11 and had interviews with a wife of a father and son who died tragically saving people from the wreckage.  We spent days talking to this woman and mourning for her loss.  Then we spend moments on the death totals.  Does anyone on the top of their head even know the death toll from 9/11?  I don’t.  While I’m on death toll subject, let’s talk about Katrina.  We spent days watching Rappa B (whatever the hell his name is) saying, “Bush hates white people” but does anyone even know the death total for Katrina?

Well, moving on… And now for the juice:

Why is everyone so quick to blame the government or the media monster?  While defending the writers and saying they are forced to keep death as numbers and not pictures.  Perhaps it is we the Americans who no longer care how or why someone died as long as it’s not our newest “American Idol” or some hot model, gone fat chick, gone hot again. (Anna Nicole Smith is who I’m referring to for those slow on the pick up)  If people were bombed in bumfuckistan why should we care that they were torn to pieces and then fed to the bomber’s pet alligators that swim in his fountain of blood?

Do we really want a gorified newscast?  Only if it’s something we actually give a hell about.  If our High School star QB Marine John Bobley gets killed by an Iraqi Jihadists the writers will be sure to talk about how horrible the attack was and how they used children with bombs to get to close enough to the Marines.  How all of John Boley’s friend Marines got arms blown off, how his parents mourn his death and the memorials Valley High put up with candles and crying babies.  This is the kind of story that the government knows will fuel our rage for the Iraqi’s innumerable assaults on us.  (Which, by happenstance, were nonexistant previous to our occupation)  BUT just because the government and the media monster let this story through to enrage us we cannot blame them for using that to anger us.  After all, it is we who hush conversations and turn up the TV to hear about poor John Bobley and his mourning family.  The media monster uses these stories only because we want to hear them. 

So before you blame the media and the government look into your heart of hearts and tell me it’s not partly your fault.

-Hud

Much ado about nothing here. Most Americans are terrified of death. We dare not say someone “died.” We say he crossed over or passed. How silly! Dead is dead. But so as to pretend the person isn’t really “dead” we dress the corpse in Sunday-go-to-meeting duds, style the hair, apply makeup and nail polish and lay the passee in a satin-lined coffin surrounded by flowers and organ music. No 72 virgins awaiting, just cold, damp earth or a fiery furnace, take your pick. I find such preparations obscene. Give me Fisk’s realistic prose any day.

first i would like to commend truthdig for allowing my comments re robert fisk to stand. not every leftist publication, web or print, would allow something which disagreed w/ it to be printed (i guess would still be the term). so i guess truthdig really IS a leftist publication. good for it.

second, & in my irritation i had missed this, NO, it is not hard to find people who write well of death. for heavens sake. find a pre-suicide, a talented one, & you are right there. it might be hard to find someone NOW who writes well of death, because people are so medicated, meeting-ed, & mediocre, but before now—oh, a great example is that falling down, falling apart manic depressive phil ochs. & no, the cia did NOT kill him. for heavens sake, redux.

better a writer of death, or pre-death, than of protest songs. listen, or just read the words to “rehearsals for retirement” or “the scorpion departs but never returns” & you will find someone who writes far better of death or anything else, for that matter, than robert cole or juan fisk could ever dream of pushing his or his pen in a circle to attain. thank you.

as far as lethal injection goes, yep, of course it is the best way to die. anyone who has watched a person die of cancer can tell you that. & i am AGAINST the death penalty. the reason is not because lethal injection is inhumane; it ISNT inhumane. the death penalty is so obviously imposed inappropriately. 2 people i knew were killed by the hillside stranglers. did they get the death penalty? does anyone know how they killed people? then some guy who holds up a liquor store gets it? is this crazy? & so on.

the problem i see w/ the michael morales business is that it was he who they chose not to kill. why not tookie williams? & how about the ex-buddhist monk who grey davis shamefully put to death? oh, my horrible state. & then, of course, the problem w/ anti death penalty *advocates* is that they absolutely will not acknowledge, EVER, the terribleness of the crimes that people like michael morales commit. hypocrisy must be erased in ALL cases, in ALL places. the left should know that, but it is something the left has forgotten, or perhaps it has buried it deep beneath the pile of political correctness & identity politics. has the left noticed that the bush administration has so easily co-opeted these?

Mr. Earl:

Well said!

Well written, Mr. Solomon. Couldn’t agree more. In the Vietnam era the warmakers realized the nightly details of death on TV eventually turned them into the bad guys.

Oh, we can’t be seen as a violent society. How rude!

Well, we’d only be hiding the truth from ourselves.

the fly in the ointment here is that if the political position of the dead did not agree with the political position of robert fisk, robert fisk would NEVER have reported on the issue at all.

very dangerous to use robert fisk as an example to prove a general point about something as enveloping as what the media does or does not choose to cover. all one has to do is read robert fisk’s comments on the cartoon riots to know that he can certainly be, at the very least, biased, & a step above that, specious. i could keep climbing the ladder upward or downward for robert fisk. you say up, i say down. were he apologizing for the horrendous violent actions of rightwing christian fundamentalists, our feet would move as one.

as for the media not reporting on death—do people -think- about death? the further we get from experiencing life lived in our own bodies & not through the mediation of everything (sort of like keeping ones hands, or ones self on the means of production—but that is long gone), the further ANYone is going to be from thinking about death. death? there’s tv, tivo. who cares, not me.

lots of -distraction- in this world. everything from cindy margolis to cindy shee-han. i would say that there has been a death to depth, but i no longer think anyone would understand what i mean.

Perhaps death is “not covered well” because, along with birth, it’s what we all have in common. And “common” is the operative term. “Common” is NOT news. And, frankly, when it isn’t your OWN death, or that of a loved one, in question, it isn’t your “ox” that’s being gored.

So we all “tsk, tsk” about death in the abstract… other people’s deaths a world away… and go on about our living.

Being dead, of course, is no problem for the dead ones. VIEWING the dead is a problem only for the living… it scares the hell out of most people because they know their turn is coming.  Unless you’re into being “scared,” viewing death is not usually on our “to do” list and we avoid it.

What I find strangely “amusing” is that single deaths are not news and are usually ignored by the media… but let a busload or planeload or buildingload get “wasted” and it’s stop the presses and hold the front page. The media leaps tall buildings to ferret out relatives so to extract and illustrate their grieving for all the world to see (and buy). Grief sells when it’s not our own on sale.

As I’ve contributed elsewhere, death is really no big deal. We all do it. If it weren’t for all the religious nonsense we’re fed about afterlife and entering Paradise and Heaven or Hell and other such spooky, superstitious mumbo-jumbo, dying and death would be a most unremarkable event.

Not many want the “ride” to end… but end it must. And if it must, let it be under our own control. Few things infuriate me more than listening to self-important “authority” arrogantly pretend to tell me how and when I can die (does anyone remember a certain Attorney-General’s attempt to interfere in Oregon’s right to die legislation?)

Just for the record, I want all the eager, small minded, interfering, bureaucratic legal eagles out there to know that I couldn’t care less what’s “legal” or “illegal.” It’s MY death and I’ll arrange it any way I see fit. It’s preposterous for anyone, or any legislature to assume the right to interfere.

We should all be so lucky as to “go” by “lethal injection.” It’s my first choice. (If you’ve ever watched as your pet was euthanized, you know what I mean. Sad, yes… as losing any friend is sad. But as “good deaths” go it’s First Class.)

If legislators want to put something useful on the books try passing a regulation that once you’ve been diagnosed as terminally ill with death not long off, NO FURTHER PUBLIC FUNDS will be expended for such treatment as chemotherapy or radiation… it’s a stupid and fruitless waste of time and resources. Spare no effort to bring comfort and relief from pain, but nothing else. To die is inevitable and not even remarkable. My opinion, anyway.

tomack raises an important question about press timidity in the US. The government certainly doesn’t want these stories to get out, especially not this supersecretive administration. But I don’t think it’s the editors holding reporters back so much as the corporate owners of the news media; namely, General Electric, a major defense contractor (NBC), Viacom (CBS), Disney (ABC), and News Corp, owned by Rupert Murdoch (FOX). Huge conglomerates like these are interested in only one thing: making money. Journalistic accuracy and investigative reporting to ferret out the truth will never be allowed to interfere with that all-important mission.

Mr. Solomon,

Robert Frisk got his story through. Why can’t American reporters and columnists do the same? What is stopping them? Is it government or is it the editors? If the editors, why? Do they think that Americans can only handle the grisly truth of death when portrayed in movies?

I agree 100% with your perception and would like to know why that is.