5 Feet of Fury

Living vicariously through another’s death

Michael Coren writes:

…men and women across this country become passionate about this sickening crime not because they care but because they want to live vicariously through others and be part of an enormous and grotesque “happening.”

They would take sides. Is it her, it is him, are the police doing what they should be doing, shall I use the vocabulary I heard on CSI so that I sound clever?

Call talk radio and pretend to cry, drive to the spot where it happened so as to leave flowers on a secular shrine that commemorates those who visit it rather than she to whom it is supposed to be dedicated.

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Someone in the comments makes a point I’ve raised here before: the fairly recent (post-Lady Di) cropping up of ‘makeshift memorials’ to commemorate every car accident and other minor tragedy.

Frankly, I resent other people presuming that I care to share their grief. That somehow, they have a “right” (and you know that word would come up, if pushed) to impose their personal concerns upon me.

Your loved one already has a gravesite, presumably; why does he require another memorial (of cheap, dirty, tatty flowers) by the side of the road?

Nobody else cares, except you. And that’s as it should be. Can’t you accept that, and keep your feelings to yourself?