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Originally Posted by Ustwo
I just don't understand the connection people have for people who don't know them from Adam because they are celebrities. If your mother died I'd feel sympathy for you. If she was your mother, I'd feel sympathy for you.
Shes someone no one here knows personally which makes her no different than anyone else who died today.
I just don't get the cult of celebrity. If she didn't marry a movie star you wouldn't have heard about it or posted it.
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Wow, I feel like defending ustwo! I never felt this way before...
His point (and Mal's) are right on point. I certainly don't think it's inappropriate for them to bring it up. That cynicism is the balance to the drippy sentimentalism that seems to surround these sad events.
Strangely enough, ustwo's own words are a bit contradictory to me, in that he says he can express sympathy if shanifaye's mom died. I assume that ustwo knows shanifaye solely from this forum (of course, I could be very wrong). It begs the question -- how many degrees of separation are necessary for genuine sympathy or empathy to be expressed for another person? I think that's the underlying question.
I see something personal in Reeve's death. I see my grandmother's and grandfather's and my father's struggles with cancer. I'm old enough to remember when the word "cancer" really was whispered, because it was scary and very deadly and people avoided cancer patients -- they just disappeared into hospitals, and very often died. I'm glad it's a fight that's out in the open now, and support groups at the very least reassure people that other families are fighting the disease as well. Cancer is an equal-opportunity disease. It comforts people to know that celebrities are just as human as the rest of the world. Maybe that's the allure of this type of news.