The Pornography of Public Grief

Crime, Ethics, Etiquette, Free Will Vs. Determinism, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Pseudoscience, Psychiatry, Reason

The following is from “The Pornography of Public Grief,” the current column, now on WND.COM:

“A headline on the Huffington Post blared: ‘Comfort Dogs Sent To Newtown From Chicago Area To Help Community After Sandy Hook Shooting.’ CNN’s top dog Anderson Cooper followed—or led the pack; who cares?—with a similar segment about insourcing dogs to comfort the afflicted community of Newtown, Conn.

One day after the massacre of 20 children and seven adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School, ‘a group of golden retrievers from the Chicago area made a cross-country journey to … Newtown.’

Woof, woof, or barf, barf?

Are there no companion dogs in Newtown, Conn.? Must expert dogs be brought in to properly minister to the mourners? Apparently so. Even the neighborhood dog is now unqualified for the big time.

The pornography of public grief in our country is almost as warped as the evil (not ill), mother-slaying, mass murderer responsible for the Sandy Hook carnage. There is very little dignity in the freaky spectacle of mass contagion—where members of the public turn professional mourners, flock to memorial happenings for victims they never knew, and mill about for hours in the hope of being discovered by the master of ceremonies, the journalist.

These ritualistic displays are symptomatic of our festering cultural commons.

At the center of this festering culture that turns victims into a backdrop and prop to the state’s army of experts is the journalist. …”

Read the complete column, “The Pornography of Public Grief,” now on WND.COM.

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UPDATED: DOD Is Killing Us (& On So-Called Cuts To Killer Spending/ers)

Debt, Economy, Military, Republicans, War

When the need to slash the military is raised, Republicans typically counter that their beloved Department of Defense is a small-ticket item. Blame Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

He who admits half the truth is still a wholesale liar. The DOD is a budgetary killer.

Via Fox News’ Bret Baier:

Each day during the month of November, the government brought in a little more than $5 billion of revenue. That’s a lot of money – but the U.S. government spent in that time more than $11 billion a day. The difference is roughly $6 billion.
Of that $11 billion, the top items were as follows: The Department of Health and Human Services, which goes through roughly $3 billion a day; Social Security, which shells out roughly $2.5 billion a day; the Department of Defense, which runs a $1.8 billion daily tab; and interest on the debt, which eats up $854 million every day.

MORE.

UPDATE (19/12/012): Finally, Republicans, and a couple of Democrats and their anointed experts, are framing all budget proposals out there as they should—and as these worse-than-useless efforts are habitually framed by libertarians (led by Ron Paul): “cuts to designated increases in spending.”

Bret Baier (archived here) has been tackling the structure of the debt:

At last check, it was approaching $16.4 trillion. Just four years ago, it was $10.6 trillion.
The skyrocketing number is, to say the least, reason for concern for every American.
Here’s why:
As of today, every household in the United States owes about $140,000 of this debt.
The country is borrowing roughly $6 billion every day, and $239 million every hour. Put another way, that’s $4 million every minute.
The country runs up so much debt for a fairly basic reason — it spends far more than it takes in. This year, for every dollar in revenue the federal government brought in, it spent two dollars and six cents. That shortfall over the course of the year adds up to the annual deficit. The national debt — or total accumulated debt — is the sum of all annual deficits, minus any surpluses. …

Hillary Clinton: Concussed Or Cowering?

Foreign Policy, Hillary Clinton, Homeland Security, Terrorism

“In the fullness of time, it will transpire that the woman who cracks the whip at Foggy Bottom had decided to leave the U.S. embassy in Libya undefended. The open community center she was running there was meant to signal that the war on Libya, Hillary Clinton’s special project, was a success.” So I prognosticated in “Standing Armies Commandeered by Cowards.”

I believe I was right, and that “Hillary’s game is up because of Benghazi.”

Mrs. Clinton was scheduled to “testify on December 20 before the House of Representatives and Senate foreign affairs committees on a report on the deadly attack on the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, that killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans.”

Now comes the news that due to her condition—Secretary Clinton suffered “a stomach virus, became dehydrated and fainted, sustaining a concussion”—Clinton’s testimony would be postponed.”

It is quite possible that this strong-as-a-horse politician has fallen ill. But it is also possible that the woman is cowering, because a decree she and her Amazon warriors issued is responsible for rendering the Libyan embassy defenseless.

It should be obvious to all that either way, Clinton has nothing to fear from Congress. Those cockroaches (with apologies to the cockroach community) have no interest in getting to the bottom of Benghazi, which is that America needs no more “Green-Zone fortresses everywhere.” Rather, we need to “divest from democratizing the word.”

UPDATED: The Pornography Of Grief (Barf, Barf)

Crime, Education, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Journalism, Media, Pop-Culture, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, The Zeitgeist

Almost as warped as the (evil, not ill) mass murderer who killed 20 children and 7 adults (his mother included) at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., is the freaky spectacle of mass contagion—where members of the public turn professional mourners, flocking to funeral happenings for victims they never knew.

Yes, each one of us can project his own baggage onto the senseless deaths in Newtown. But grief is not a tribal affair. Communities don’t grieve; individuals who incur loss do. These ritualistic displays among regular folks across the US are symptomatic of our festering cultural commons.

At the center of this festering culture is the journalist, acting as a master of ceremonies (MC). (I can see Anderson Cooper reconfiguring his Hero of the Year Award as we speak. This low-watt, dim bulb of a journo chooses America’s heroes each year, based on how many tears they shed. Pretty much.) For the media’s blow-by-blow, wall-to-wall coverage of the memorial in Newtown, Connecticut—and of every connected utterance on the issue, official or other—is a deconstruction of the discipline of journalism.

“Intellectual disciplines,” historian Keith Windschuttle has written, “were founded in ancient Greece and gained considerable impetus from the work of Aristotle who identified and organized a range of subjects into orderly bodies of learning. … The history of Western knowledge shows the decisive importance of the structuring of disciplines. This structuring allowed the West to benefit from two key innovations: the systematization of research methods, which produced an accretion of consistent findings; and the organization of effective teaching, which permitted a large and accumulating body of knowledge to be transmitted from one generation to the next.” (The Killing of History, Keith Windschuttle, Encounter, pp. 247-250)

The signal achievement of the postmodern tradition has been to completely dismantle one of the greatest achievements of Western Civilization: the intellectual discipline.

If there is nothing new to report on the case, no reporting needs to take place.

The victims of this shooting have become a sideshow in the pornography of grief.

UPDATE: BARF, BARF. A headline on Huffington Post (CNN’s Alpha Female, Anderson Cooper, Did a Similar Segment on The Topic): “Comfort Dogs Sent To Newtown From Chicago Area To Help Community After Sandy Hook Shooting.”

One day after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, a group of golden retrievers from the Chicago area made a cross-country journey to comfort the affected community in Newtown.

Apparently there are no companion dogs in Newtown, Conn. They had to import expert dogs to handle the situation.

There is very little dignity in this.

You can’t make this stuff up.