Posted on 11/12/2004 8:46:18 PM PST by Stoat
| Theodore Dalrymple
11 November 2004
Three British soldiers, members of a famous regiment called the Black Watch, died recently in a car-bomb explosion in Iraq—the first British soldiers to perish this way in the terror-plagued country. For a few days, the British press and broadcasting media treated the event as if nothing else in the world mattered. The reaction was little short of hysterical, no doubt to the encouragement and pleasure of future car-bombers. As is now usual whenever tragedy strikes, the press and broadcasters went straight to the relatives of the victims and asked them what they felt. Quiet grief and private dignity have become things of the past in contemporary Britain, replaced by sensation-seeking and shameless prurience. Journalists recently swarmed the survivors of a recent train crash and the doctors treating the injured, looking for tidbits to stimulate the jaded palates of the folks at home. A sibling of one of the dead soldiers said in an interview that his brother had not volunteered in order to die on foreign soil but instead to bring home a paycheck. He never expected to go to war. Moreover, he believed this war to be wrong: ergo, Prime Minister Blair had innocent blood on his hands. We may marvel at a society in which people join an entirely volunteer army for the pay alone, allegedly unaware that their lives might one day face danger at the orders of the government, whether they liked it or not, as if an army were some kind of alternative social security. Will medical students one day complain because they never knew they might one day see blood and death? We should make allowances, of course, for statements that the bereaved make in the first shock of grief and loss. What is reprehensible is that interviewers should seek to provoke these utterances in the first place and then broadcast them far and wide. Exactly the same thing happened when terrorists beheaded the first British hostage in Iraq: the opinions of his relatives were sought and filled the newspapers and airwaves for days. This could only encourage more such atrocities. Raw, undigested emotionalism now prevails in the British press and broadcasting media, whatever the subject. Weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth in public are almost compulsory if one does not wish to appear indifferent to the sufferings of others. Sobs are the ultimate argument, the QED of our age. The stiff upper lip belongs to a Britain that is no more. |
BTTT
And shame. Personally, I think "shame" should be brought back.
BTW, I liked this article; it's all true and I have to admit I'm part of the problem, being the news junkie that I am.
I agree with what you say about shame, but I would wish to respectfully disagree with your contention that you need to blame yourself, merely because you are an inquisitive person who likes to keep up on news and current events. I would submit that it is not you who is driving the new 'ethic' that Mr. Dalrymple speaks of, but a combination of daytime television and our very wealthy society. Daytime television contributes to this in the form of soap operas, "Oprah" and Oprah clones because television is primarily visual and therefore emotional in nature. You know the phrase "a picture is worth a thousand words"? Television conveys and maniupulates emotion more than anything else (and the advertisers are of course fully aware of that). Our wealthy society contributes to it because probably 90% or more of all people in the U.S. are far removed from the harsher aspects of life...and death. How many people do you suppose have actually killed an animal for food?
Most people these days live out their lives in a very comfortable and safe cocoon, where their primary emotional outlets are through television and sex. When a horrific event occurs in their lives, they think that the natural thing to do is to go on Oprah and tell the entire planet about it and cry like a baby. I believe that all of this is tied in together with things such as voting patterns, the gun-banning movement, ritalin for 'overactive' boys and bulimia, among other things. In general, our wealthy, television/emotion oriented society doesn't require people to be dignified in their grief, have shame, etc. because they don't have to....they look at the TV and the Oprah tells them to reach for their inner child, and that's precisely what they do.
Sorry to ramble and rant, but I suppose you can tell that I think that there's a lot of sickness and weakness in our society, much of which is preventable but it's an unfortunate sign of our times.
The media all over the world plays on emotions.....
From the headline I thought this was going to be about the Arafat "funeral".
LQ
Why don't the families just tell the press to go away? That's what I would do.
While we're at it, we ought to ban "spontaneous shrines" for dead celebs, and the attendant piles of teddy bears.
Mrs. Slim works in a school, and when one of the students died, they brought in "grief counselors". Her take on it was that the kids figured out the those who acted out and had the greatest histrionics got the most attention.
it is a sad state
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