(no subject)
Happy Inauguration Day, everyone!
Oath bloopers, good music, kick-ass speech, and what a sweet benediction:
This guy's from Atlanta, too. I'm gonna find him and shake his hand.
I found an article about some Penn State students who dressed as VT shooting victims for Halloween. While I don't completely agree with their actions, I did offer my own thoughts, inspired in part by the words of one of the offending students:
What these guys did is insulting to people who were truly affected by the shootings at VT, but one of them also made an excellent point about the trendiness of mourning when extraordinary events such as these happen.
I was living in Savannah, Georgia when the shootings occurred, and via facebook I saw hundreds of people who had no direct, second party, or even third party connection to the shootings engaging in a massive display of what was nothing less than borrowed sorrow. I don’t deny the shootings were a bad thing, but I was also disgusted by the overeager mob sentimentality that seemed to dominate the days following the shootings. I knew no one at Virginia Tech, whether victim or bystander, but I thought-and still think-it’s disgusting to jump on the bandwagon of mourning a tragedy that isn’t really your own. It cheapens it, frankly. Let the truly suffering work out their suffering and don’t dilute their misery with your unattached, wanton emoting.
Give blood and volunteer, and don’t do so only when something like VT happens. Don’t just buy a shirt or a magnetic sticker and cry at a football game and think you’ve contributed anything significant, because in that case you have only done the exact opposite; you are making a mockery of another person’s real tragedy. In a way, that kind of mockery is closer to the mockery audaciously put forth by the Penn State students in question. What they did is shameful, but what many idly, trendily sorrowful people did across the country is equally shameful.
I know I'm not in line with what is probably the popular stance on this, but I didn't buy into the whole crowd-suffering phenomenon when the shootings happened. Like I said, I think it has a cheapening effect. That's just my opinion, informed by my own experience and thereby-formed disaffection for anything unthinkingly mobbish, which I feel much of the VT reaction was.
Oath bloopers, good music, kick-ass speech, and what a sweet benediction:
Click to viewThis guy's from Atlanta, too. I'm gonna find him and shake his hand.
I found an article about some Penn State students who dressed as VT shooting victims for Halloween. While I don't completely agree with their actions, I did offer my own thoughts, inspired in part by the words of one of the offending students:
What these guys did is insulting to people who were truly affected by the shootings at VT, but one of them also made an excellent point about the trendiness of mourning when extraordinary events such as these happen.
I was living in Savannah, Georgia when the shootings occurred, and via facebook I saw hundreds of people who had no direct, second party, or even third party connection to the shootings engaging in a massive display of what was nothing less than borrowed sorrow. I don’t deny the shootings were a bad thing, but I was also disgusted by the overeager mob sentimentality that seemed to dominate the days following the shootings. I knew no one at Virginia Tech, whether victim or bystander, but I thought-and still think-it’s disgusting to jump on the bandwagon of mourning a tragedy that isn’t really your own. It cheapens it, frankly. Let the truly suffering work out their suffering and don’t dilute their misery with your unattached, wanton emoting.
Give blood and volunteer, and don’t do so only when something like VT happens. Don’t just buy a shirt or a magnetic sticker and cry at a football game and think you’ve contributed anything significant, because in that case you have only done the exact opposite; you are making a mockery of another person’s real tragedy. In a way, that kind of mockery is closer to the mockery audaciously put forth by the Penn State students in question. What they did is shameful, but what many idly, trendily sorrowful people did across the country is equally shameful.
I know I'm not in line with what is probably the popular stance on this, but I didn't buy into the whole crowd-suffering phenomenon when the shootings happened. Like I said, I think it has a cheapening effect. That's just my opinion, informed by my own experience and thereby-formed disaffection for anything unthinkingly mobbish, which I feel much of the VT reaction was.