A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it. *

Yesterday we heard that a good friend of ours has been killed.  If you live here in the KC area you've probably seen it on the news, I'm not going to link to it here.  We are devastated.  His family is devastated.  It doesn't matter how he died, or where his body was found, or under what circumstances this horrible thing has happened.  What matters is he was a kind and sweet man.  He was a good man.  And he had a gorgeous, sweet wife and three beautiful kids, and their lives are ruined.  And they don't particularly need the help of the KCMO police spokesman who made sweeping announcements about how their father may have been involved in drugs, thank you very much, and thanks to that jackass the world now associates this man not with the life he really led, but with the way in which his life was taken.

I know I shouldn't be surprised about the media frenzy.  When someone in the inner city is killed in a violent crime, the news trucks troll through and the world shrugs once again and turns away, another statistic.  But when it happens to a white, middle class family in the Johnson County suburbs, suddenly its big news, and fair game to exploit.  When the news trucks trolled through my neighborhood yesterday, stopping my friends who were watching their kids play in the culdesac, even knocking on neighbor's doors asking for a comment, I got angrier and angrier.  They aren't interested in his life.  They are after the dirt.  And its wrong. 

And somehow, I have to explain to my children that their friend's daddy is gone.

* Oscar Wilde, as quoted in The Week, who noted it was quoted somewhere else, and whatever, he said it.  And when I read it this morning over my coffee it occurred to me that the media has always been this way, and that its because the general public want it that way.

Comments

[cagey]

Unfortunately, you are correct - the public DOES want it that way. It's human nature. If a person living in the inner city gets gunned down, the folks in the suburbs can comfort themselves by saying "oh, they live there and I don't, so it can't happen to me". When a white guy who doesn't live there gets gunned down there, everyone has to come up with some other reason that it won't happen to them.

I don't go into KCMO nearly as much as I used to when I worked there, but I do still go quite often even though I am a "White SAHM in the 'Burbs". I go for various reasons (lunch, social, special events). It drives my grandma crazy, but I am not going to deny myself and my son of the great things that KCMO has to offer. You can live your life in fear, but that's not really living - is it?

I'm really sorry to hear about your friend. I can't imagine.

[Karen in KC]

My thoughts and prayers are with you. I am sorry for your loss.

[christine]

Terrible. I actually hadn't heard it - I have a passionate hatred of our local news, and never watch it, but I went and read the story anyway. It's just awful, my heart goes out to his wife and kids. I just can't fathom any of it. How are you holding up?