Comments on: Putting the Dead to Work

By: The Constructivist

The Constructivist — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 12:13:49 +0000

Lindsay Beyerstein disagrees thoughtfully (probably without having read your post, is my guess).

By: The Constructivist

The Constructivist — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 11:53:49 +0000

Tim, I agreed with your post so much I agreed with it even before I knew it existed. (I posted this over at Mostly Harmless about 5 hours before your post, when the time difference is taken into account, and I'd love to hear your answer to the question posed in it.)

By: withywindle

withywindle — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 05:05:05 +0000

Very great agreement.

By: William Benzon

William Benzon — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 12:51:14 +0000

Well said, Tim.

By: Jonathan Dresner

Jonathan Dresner — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 08:23:37 +0000

I guess the question should be, then, why is this case different, at least in your eyes?

By: Timothy Burke

Timothy Burke — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 00:49:03 +0000

Of course we’ll talk, all of us. I think we should. How can we not wrestle with the meaning of such a thing? It’s just that normally I don’t find the lack of profundity in our public spaces to be a big deal–in fact, normally I’d defend mass culture against the charge that it lacks profundity. But right now? The lack is painful.

By: Jonathan Dresner

Jonathan Dresner — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 00:26:41 +0000

Is it so hard to let the dead lie in peace for a few days, to reflect quietly and somberly on the horror and pain of it? Yes, of course it is. Horror and pain are commodities with short shelf-lives, and if they're going to be leveraged, then they have to be used now, or else you need an echo chamber to maintain a high level of horror/pain rhetoric in order to get anything done. Seriously, I do think that anyone who's main response to this kind of event is "I told you so" needs to be ignored, journalists filling air time with speculation and cliche should be chastised, and I've got no argument with your rejection of monocausal advocacy. But I also think that discussions will happen, and though the event itself is tragic, it also might be good for us to have a discussion of these issues (whatever these issues are) in the light of concrete examples rather than abstract concerns.

By: julian

julian — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 19:50:02 +0000

Thanks, Tim. This morning I watched a CNN reporter back a kid she was interviewing into a corner so that he had to utter a media cliché. This was a kid who had likely saved some people’s lives, his own included, by shoving a table in front of a door and preventing the killer from reentering the room where he had already shot many. At the end of the young man’s description of those events, which had to be hard for him, she asked him pointedly how it felt to be called a hero. He burst into tears and finally said something to the effect that he was just glad he could be there.

By: Nick

Nick — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 17:49:08 +0000

I totally agree, here in the UK the shootings had barely occurred before we were inviting pro and anti-gun control lobbyists onto our news programs to analyse the ‘US attitude to guns and violence’.

The idiots on both sides of that debate wasted no time in voicing their accusations/defences. I’ve contempt for both, frankly.

By: Russell Arben Fox

Russell Arben Fox — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 13:54:14 +0000

“Do we have to domesticate every event into the simple-mindedness of single-cause arguments, master the meaninglessness that sometimes comes with being human with the jabber of the punditocracy? Can’t we just reach out collectively to put a quiet hand on the shoulder of those who have lost friends, family and colleagues?”

Wonderfully put, Tim; thank you. Reminders like these, in the midst of our all-opinion-all-the-time world, can’t come often enough.

And, should anyone affected by this tragedy happen to read this post, you have my prayers and deepest condolences.