Riddle me this, Batman: How come everybody found it so acceptable to make fun of Terri Schiavo?

dude, did you read my post up above? no wonder we are married in real life. we are heartless lovebirds!

"It's occured to me that a lot of the nastiness might be as a distancing mechanism." I think that this is pretty much OTM.

At the risk of sounding callous, and since I don't know any of her family personally and cannot directly cause them grief, I don't think it's all that terrible. It certainly isn't unforeseeable. When I think of the thousands of people here who are going through similar family tragedies, seeing out their Alzheimer's stricken parents or their car crash battered children, when I think of the countless people slowly deterioating from AIDS and other diseases, when I think of the latest Indonesian quake victims or the victims in Darfur, it occurs to me that coping with death is something we all have to face (or ignore) in our own ways, with as much dignity and good humor as we can muster, and that a single death is but a drop in the bucket of our planet's woes.

I was not present when my grandfather died but there was a brief viewing before he was cremated, and I was shocked to find that I went through many different emotions during the breif period we had to say goodbye. At one point, though, we were all laughing as we recalled his many foibles and some of his better bon mots.

I don't get it.

I am sort of puzzled that she's this Holy Symbold for the wingnut crowd, but not for its opponents: clearly she should matter just as much to you (symbolically speaking) if you're on her husband's side?

(double xpost)

thank you.

Humor/remembering good things/a joke or two /= the kind of bullshit that's been on this board recently. TERRI SMASH. Uh, yeah, v. funny, genius, hurrah.

BTW those of you using the "this is how I deal with death excuse": uh in what way do you have to "deal" with the deaths of people you don't care about, are not personally acquainted with, don't know v. much about, etc?

How many of you have a dead relative? Wanna post some pictures of them? Cos I'd like to photoshop their heads into compromising, awful positions, and laugh and laugh and laugh. That'd be really funny, right? That's how I deal with their death. That person, you know, that you care about and I don't know anything about other than they exist and hey, that's funny!

xpost not a meaningless complaint. Maybe the complaint is more like "ACTUALLY BE FUNNY"

Tragedy + 0 time = 0 humor

also you still haven't explained how the examples listed fall into "suffering" or "nonsense" UM XPOST GEORGE CARLIN? ARE YOU INSANE?

xpost then don't try to be funny, it's assholish, fucked up, disturbing, sociopathic behavior.

xpost no i was agreeing with her. where is the suffering in "white guys drive like *this*?" where is the suffering in "what's the deal with toothpaste?"

xpost Yeah Schiavo, Perdue, these are not people that affect my life. I'm not upset by their passings. But it bothers me that being not bothered by it means it's totally ok to turn it into "laugh" fest 2005.

OTM

fair enough. i don't really have any excuse, i'm bored and lazy.

xpost - cutty that dude contributed to my life by kicking ass in clikitat ikatowi and ayler's angels, not being shown with a gaping-wide mouth on tv every 2 seconds.

""white guys drive like *this*?"

Uh, racial stereotyping has actually hurt people you know.

"where is the suffering in "what's the deal with toothpaste?""

the speaker is suffering from neurosis about toothpaste, which is both weird and nonsensical.

and i HATE A.R.E. WEAPONS.

the speaker is suffering from neurosis about toothpaste, which is both weird and nonsensical

Oh, come on.

perdue chicken is pretty much the best kind I think.

xpost: Shakey, that is the stupidest, most slippery-slope-to-excusing-oneself post anyone's ever made. BRAVO! I find your sense of humor absurdist!

cf. the Buddha.