Mike Thomas 'has teardrops' today, as my daughter would put it.
The great one weeps to think civil liberties might be claimed as a figleaf-rationale for fellow-taxpaying, 'enquiring-minded' sociopaths to exercise their god-given 'Merkan right to jerk off to Sea World footage of the unfortunate trainer who recently died. This unlucky gambler, Dawn Brancheau, got her ticket punched when the park's 12,000 lb. 'pet' bull whale apparently mistook her for--or just vengefully used her as--a ragdoll.
I agree with Thomas, but would hasten to register a 'fuck you too, buddy' caveat, at the same time.
Freedom-of-info as deathporn is tacky in the outer extreme. Though you know...gotta say it occurs to me there IS the following argument for sort of going easy on the fainting couch routine here:
what happened to this woman, you know, happened.
On stage.
During a public performance.
During a pricey public performance, a non-trivial part of which, mind you, is that 'trainers'--a job description less euphemistic, less pseudo-sciency times would have gone by the title ''whale-tamers'--go swimming in the water with giant wild animals whose common name is, not without reason, "killer whale".
To me, much more shameful is the release of family visitation jail videos of local 'celebrity criminals'...these people whose vilification the Sentinel makes a tabloidish business model out of pimping. Clarence Thomas was/is a big, horrible, 'uppity'-hating crybaby:
THESE folks, the Casey Anthonys, Jim Wards, Melinda Ducketts and Misty Croslins, and their families--these are the folks who get the 'high tech lynchings'.
Lynched at the grubby hands of an audience of mouthbreather hypocrites whose, generally speaking, obnoxious religiosity, centers on the following image: A vilified man-god whose fetishized public crucifixion was, by the faithfuls' own account, an absolutely grotesque orgy of public humiliation. We're talking about a Joe Campbell 'hero's journey' unrivaled for it's wallowing in an iconography of unjust and complete degradation. The hero-savior is spat upon, mocked, crowned w/ thorns and jeered at by just exactly the same kind of sadistic, hate-frenzied mob as the Sentinel panders to and eggs on with its crime-reporting tabloidism.
No Veronicas or Simons anywhere in this readership; just a virtual mob of mouthbreathers with pinata sticks, literally too dull to see what the problem with this sort of thing might be.
All in a country where the first commandment of the criminal law is that the accused have, as a matter of (media-shredded) right, to be 'presumed innocent until proven guilty'.
And THAT is the much more shameful example of trampling on privacy rights to "cash in" (as Thomas puts it) on the base instincts of lowest-common-denominator audience pandering.
Much worse.
via jdoorworker.typepad.com
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