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Of Lives and Statistics
Jan. 4th, 2005 08:26 pmIt's always bothered me that the media will trumpet their top whatever lists of the year before the year is over. They do this for two reasons. One is that they need lead time to make these things (they do this with celebrate obituaries too, especially for any celebrate whose getting on in years - leading to some amusing faux pas' when the obituary is accidentally published prior to their actually being dead). The other is that they need to have it as close to the new year as possible to trump other media organizations and beat the human need for something new.
So I know why they do it, but I still think it's kind of stupid to talk about top news stories before the year is over. What do you do when something really big comes along after you've published your list - and by really big I mean a tsunami? And if you don't think this was the biggest story of 2004, consider this: Four more years of Bush is not going to produce an equivalent number of dead Iraqis or American troops.
Unless Dubya nukes Baghdad. I remember a time when I quaintly thought such an idea was unimaginable.
I've been thinking about this a bit (the tsunami, not Bush obliterating Baghdad), like most people have I suppose. I'm curiously unconcerned by the tragedy - it's too remote. I don't know anyone who is even slightly affected by it, except in the most abstract sense. The news media knows this - it's why we hear stories about Jet Li twisting his ankle or German supermodels hanging to a tree to keep from being swept away. To see scores of bodies stacked like cordwood into mass graves is to lose the audience because it's something you just can't get your head around.
Well, a girl I know did have an ex-boyfriend who survived the disaster. There were jokes about how the karmic balance was broken when 150,000 people died, but the ex survived. I don't for a second believe she really wanted to see this guy die no matter how much of a prick he may have been - it's just a way that people will use humour to offset the tension of an event that's not on a human scale.
How many astronauts can you fit into a Volkswagen? Eleven: two in the front, two in the back and seven in the ashtray.
One person dying is traumatic if it's someone you know. 150,000 dying on the other side of the world is a statistical anomaly. The nearer the disaster, the more it affects you. In absolute terms, the tsunami is a greater tragedy than 3000 people dead from a terrorist attack - but 9/11 was closer to home, so it affected me more. Not so much because these people were English-speaking westerners as the fact that 9/11 was man made, whereas the 2004 tsunami was an act of nature. Earthquakes (and the subsequent tsunamis) just happen and human intervention cannot stop them. A terrorist attack is a deliberate act. Death is all the same to the dead, but to the still living it may be easier to move on when your loved ones are killed in an accident rather than a murder.
Or maybe not. I've lost loved ones, but it was neither accident nor deliberate, simply the consequences of age.
I do feel sorry for the victims, in the remote sort of way that I feel sorry that Jerry Orbach died. But that's just sympathy rather than a genuinely heart-felt emotion.
And just now (like in the last two minutes) I found out that a friend's brother has just died of a heart attack. She's around my age, so I don't imagine her brother was much older. Too young regardless. I never met him, but it was still closer then Sumatra - or New York.
So I know why they do it, but I still think it's kind of stupid to talk about top news stories before the year is over. What do you do when something really big comes along after you've published your list - and by really big I mean a tsunami? And if you don't think this was the biggest story of 2004, consider this: Four more years of Bush is not going to produce an equivalent number of dead Iraqis or American troops.
Unless Dubya nukes Baghdad. I remember a time when I quaintly thought such an idea was unimaginable.
I've been thinking about this a bit (the tsunami, not Bush obliterating Baghdad), like most people have I suppose. I'm curiously unconcerned by the tragedy - it's too remote. I don't know anyone who is even slightly affected by it, except in the most abstract sense. The news media knows this - it's why we hear stories about Jet Li twisting his ankle or German supermodels hanging to a tree to keep from being swept away. To see scores of bodies stacked like cordwood into mass graves is to lose the audience because it's something you just can't get your head around.
Well, a girl I know did have an ex-boyfriend who survived the disaster. There were jokes about how the karmic balance was broken when 150,000 people died, but the ex survived. I don't for a second believe she really wanted to see this guy die no matter how much of a prick he may have been - it's just a way that people will use humour to offset the tension of an event that's not on a human scale.
How many astronauts can you fit into a Volkswagen? Eleven: two in the front, two in the back and seven in the ashtray.
One person dying is traumatic if it's someone you know. 150,000 dying on the other side of the world is a statistical anomaly. The nearer the disaster, the more it affects you. In absolute terms, the tsunami is a greater tragedy than 3000 people dead from a terrorist attack - but 9/11 was closer to home, so it affected me more. Not so much because these people were English-speaking westerners as the fact that 9/11 was man made, whereas the 2004 tsunami was an act of nature. Earthquakes (and the subsequent tsunamis) just happen and human intervention cannot stop them. A terrorist attack is a deliberate act. Death is all the same to the dead, but to the still living it may be easier to move on when your loved ones are killed in an accident rather than a murder.
Or maybe not. I've lost loved ones, but it was neither accident nor deliberate, simply the consequences of age.
I do feel sorry for the victims, in the remote sort of way that I feel sorry that Jerry Orbach died. But that's just sympathy rather than a genuinely heart-felt emotion.
And just now (like in the last two minutes) I found out that a friend's brother has just died of a heart attack. She's around my age, so I don't imagine her brother was much older. Too young regardless. I never met him, but it was still closer then Sumatra - or New York.
