Sunday, August 14, 2011

we interrupt our reglarly scheduled programming...

I sat down at the computer to write "back to school part 2" and got distracted by the newsfeed on my google homepage.  It may say bad things about me, but I clicked on the youtube video of the stage collapsing at the state fair in Indiana.  It was frightening and scary, and my heart goes out to the injured and the families of those who were killed. 

but what distracted me from my original purpose was all the hate in the comments.  I only read about the first dozen, and I was shocked.  I don't spend much time on youtube, so I have no idea whether or not this is the way things usually are, but in a place where there should have been nothing but support, sympathy, shock, and horror, there was (can you guess?) political extremism.  Both sides, weighing in, blaming the other or claiming in some weird, strange, utterly inexplicable way that the victims deserved it.

I just can't even begin to comprehend this.  Have we sunk so low?  Can we not even express sympathy for a tragedy, no matter what its size, without choosing up sides, aligning ourselves with red or blue states, picking our political agenda and flaunting it? And how exactly is that even remotely relevant to the death of five people and injuries to more than 40 others? 

And can I just reiterate that the hate was coming from both sides? 

I can't tell you how much this depresses me. 

5 comments:

  1. Ooooh this kind of shit just makes my blood boil. And why I stay away from a lot of the news.

    Sorry those selfish asshats had to ruin your day.
    Julie

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  2. I'm not even gonna click to read it. I'm just bone weary of all of it.

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  3. Okay the Ruthie post is from me, Judy, Judy, Judy aka Clever Betty. Ruthie is my daughter. Why in the name of Mercury Retrograde it came up or is coming up in Ruthie's name only a certain irritating planet knows.

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  4. That stuff just makes me so mad. Unfortunately that kind of comment behavior is the norm on YouTube videos. I stopped reading the comments some time ago because they just made me too angry. Sorry that ruined the day for you!!

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  5. Oh, well, it didn't ruin the WHOLE day. Just about a couple of hours of it. I think you are right, Julie and Debbie, no more reading the comments for me. I almost never read the letters to the editor in our local paper for the same reason. It's a small town, so they print 'em all, and believe me, it would be better if some of them never saw the light of day.

    Judy-- I've done that before, too-- in fact I'm on my daughter's laptop right now, so I'm going to have to login I know when i click submit on this comment.

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