The Innocents

There's no question that people dying is sad. Unless they are people we actively dislike, don't know or lack a sufficient Q rating to have a very somber file photo of them appear on the cover of People magazine when their time comes. Then mostly, honestly, I don't notice. Sometimes people like George Clooney or Sally Struthers will go out of their way to ask me to notice, but they're never talking about one person dying. It's usually some whole massive ethnic group all dying at once, which is frankly too overwhelming for me to consider in the commercial break between syndicated episodes of NewsRadio. In terms of the emotional capacity to process, there's an enormous difference between people dying and a people dying. As is often the case in grammar, an indefinite article can make all the difference.

Sometimes it's important to note when people die. Like when they've, say, named you as a benefactor in their will. Or they had a profound impact on your formation as the human you now are, even if that human is an asshole. Or if they are totally ruining what was up until then an exceptionally spirited game of Twister. Or if you think characterizing the method of their deaths will help you become president.

Look, I'm pretty sure who I'm planning to vote for. It's safe to say it's the one with the weird first name. And the foreign-born father. And the background in event planning. So my positions are going to be slightly colored. Right around about half colored, my positions will be. So the odds of the other side's position getting a fair airing isn't great.

Plus I feel like I've done my bit, arguing stuff that makes me wish for the preferable pleasure of simple blood-vomiting, because of what's Right and Principled, even right here on these very pretend pages. Some of the people involved in that previous debacle are even tangentially involved in this one here. The contrarian impulse that drives me to cling to Blogger in the face of the Twitter onslaught also wants me to look objectively at the rights to public expression for the production of a "film" like Innocence of Muslims and the Romney campaign in their nonsensical response to the subsequent murders in Libya. But I don't know how far I'm willing to bend in order to rise to the defense of a pretend person who exercises his right to free speech under an assumed name.* The influence of pretend people can be a scary and powerful thing and maybe should be curtailed.

This is all easier to say when the argument stops being theoretical and people have actually died. Of course it's not some sleazy movie producer's fault that some Libyans decided to shoot up a U.S. diplomatic compound. I didn't know who any of these dead people were before the nature of their deaths and the subsequent reaction became global, then political news, but now I'm asked to consider them in the broader context, both political (in relation to human rights and social justice as limited by a governing entity) and political (in re the business of elections). Freedom of speech has never really been absolute. It would take a lot to get me to say the government should be allowed to stop people from saying things and damn the consequences. But at least a narcissistic, anti-knowing-stuff, cowardly fuckwit like Terry Jones (no, not that one) is actually named that, is probably vaguely aware of the consequences of his actions and yet continues to be a narcissistic, anti-knowing-stuff, cowardly fuckwit in a very public, very enemy-findable kind of way. The same, almost word for word, can be said for Mitt Romney.

This other guy... I don't know. The impulse response he elicits from me is practically Cheney-esque. Which is the scariest thing I've ever said about myself.


---

*this time let me state I do not specifically mean Willard Romney