People Are Dead

People are dead. A nine year old girl is dead. Not even 24 hours have passed and already, as I write this, the national conversation is locked all the way down to the Facebook posts. They're dead. The girl is dead. The judge is dead. At least three others are dead. A woman was shot in the head and is fighting for her life. Am I wrong to want the puppet show passed for politics to be postponed until at least, say, tomorrow? Why am I hearing the names and words already? Why am I hearing people blame a cable news network? Why am I hearing about Sarah Palin and Glen Beck?

People are dead. A nine year old girl is dead. Do you know that the early broadcasts of the event consisted of the appointed Bobblehead reading text from YouTube and Myspace? Any of us can do that. By now, the feeds are scrolling, the graphics are working, the faces are rotating. Facebook is already peppered with television. Those people, that girl, are no longer dead. Already they are being bandied about from press release to press prelease. They have been absorbed into the maelstrom of hot air that swarms out of control through the homes and minds of Americans. Making up your own mind, are you? You wish. If you're not already using the handbook imprinted on your mind, youre swinging at whatever the talking heads are lobbing your way.

Stop. Kick all voices out of your head save your own. Allow your mind to process a man pointing a firearm at a person's head point blank and firing. Go one step further and try to imagine that this person's actions has, in some way, a connection to us all, as people. Dwell on it as long as you need until you absorb it. Then, maybe you can step up to the conversation with a right mind. You will not be scrambling about frantically trying to piece together fragments from a late night talk show monologue. Death should be able to exclude someone from our inane ravings, at least for a little while, right? Why am I thinking of folks like the Westboro Baptist Church protesting funerals? They really don't get it and neither do you if you cannot resist jumping into the melee following murder with virtually the same fervor as when Jersey Shore gets a new cast member.