Is it ... "Civilized" ... to be satirical about the death of another human being?
In the words of Gremlins 2: "Civilized? No, decidedly not ... but funny!"
*
H/T SnarkyBytes via
Zeta Wolf
LATER:
Actually, this all makes me feel very uncomfortable.
Do you remember the images of Arabs dancing in the streets when they heard the news that the Twin Towers had been taken down?
This is nothing more ... or less.
I think it's the smarmy looks of the pianist (Is that Martin Short on a bad day?) when he perceives that he is pleasing the audience. It's an expression of gloating, and if Shadenfreud had not been invented before by the Germans, it would have been re-invented now.
Whatever the reason, when we gloat on the death of Bin Laden .... it doesn't exactly put us in the same barbaric league as those Arabs who danced in the street at our misfortune, but it certainly is a significantly similar state of mind.
I, for one, do not care for the comparison.
Yes, I know that Bin Laden gloried over his deliberate murder of 3000 innocents.
Yes, I understand the difference between gloating over the 3,000, and gloating over the death of a single not-innocent.
But I still don't like it.
It was necessary for us to but down the mad dog Bin Laden.
It is not necessary for us to act like irresponsible rabble in celebration.
We're better than that. We had damn well demonstrate that to the World, if we wish to establish the clear difference between 'us' and 'them'.
I don't want to look like 'them'.
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