Don't Mention It

“All I maintain is that on this earth there are pestilences, and there are victims, and it’s up to us, so far as possible, not to join forces with the pestilences.” The Plague, by Albert Camus

The Egyptians may have had it right.
If Pharaoh, or anyone of prominence in ancient Egypt, did something really stupid – all record of their existence was obliterated.
Whether their name had been inscribed on a hundred granite obelisks, or a forty foot likeness had been carved into a cliff of stone, certain deeds were punished by absolute, eternal obscurity.
Their names were rubbed out.
Their statues toppled.
Their tombs filled with sand.
Of course eternal obscurity is not something you cannot guarantee. Historians and archaeologists have managed to piece together the names – and stories, of those the ancients tried to obscure.
But still, I think they had the right idea – and it wasn’t the obscure notion of a ancient culture: it was a basic emotional instinct that, I think, needs to be re-awoken in so-called modern man.
We have got to stop erecting monuments to evil.
Of course we don’t have obelisks, anymore – at least no one in my circle of friends does: but we do have many new ways in which notoriety is achieved.
The digital world is a kind of earth-sized board game, where with a roll of the electronic dice, it seems, anything can happen.
You Tube, Face Book, blogs, and the traditional media serve as a kind of fractured magic mirror in which our bloated vanity is reflected – though often it is only ourselves who care to look.
Still, there is at least the illusion of a digital democracy – and, as a result, the widespread fantasy that what is most often bad poetry, or amateur photography, or misbegotten philosophy, exists on the same level as that of the famous poet, the brilliant photographer, and the renowned philosopher.
And, at most, it is simply that – an illusion, or perhaps, a personal delusion: pathetic perhaps, but usually harmless.
Harmless, that is, until the kid with the cell phone, or the untalented starlet, or the so-called radio personality steps over the line. At which time their questionable beliefs and talent-free creations are metaphorically attached to a cable, pulled aloft, and dragged across the horizon where they cannot be ignored.
Stupidity, brutality, vanity: instead of guaranteeing obscurity, for those that perform an action that contains an over-abundance of any one of those attributes, they can expect fame and even fortune, instead.
The worse the action – the larger the monument we erect.
We have got things bass ackward!
I’m not suggesting we create laws which re-institute the digital equivalents of the stocks, or flogging, or corporal punishment, to try and impede certain behavior. But I am saying that we have to do more than ‘understand’ (as some media giants offer up as an excuse) that notoriety is a real reward, a real motivation.
Anna Nicole was a lousy mother, whose ditzy, drugged out behavior was rewarded time and time again, and who – when she died of an overdose of every pill she could lay her hands on, was turned into a Movie of the Week!
Cross her out!
Imus was a foul-mouthed, ex-drug addict, talk show host whose only excuse was that he was an equal-opportunity offender.
Turn him off!
And now the mentally ill man at Virginia Tech – whose name I refuse to mention, who lived only as long as it took him to plan and execute his media extravaganza.
Erase his name!
Stop giving these pathetic individuals attention.
Stop giving these idiots hours and hours of so-called ‘news coverage’.
Don’t put their faces on magazine covers.
Delete their web sites.
Don’t pay people who knew them, for telling us what they were like before they made the big time.
The only reasonable, human reaction to the murder of nearly three dozen members of the Virginia Tech community, was stunned shock.
The only reason for television cameras on the Virginia Tech campus after this crime, was to witness the grief.
The only commentary that we should have heard from the talking heads that flocked to Blacksburg like vultures to a carcass, was silence.
The first thing we need to do is expunge every public mention of the sad little man who wanted so badly for someone to notice him.
Let the historians have him. Let the psychologists have him.
But for the rest of us, erase him from the papers, the television, and the internet. To do otherwise is to trivialize tragedy, and encourage imitation.
To do otherwise is to build another monument to evil.