Today, while checking my e-mail, I noticed that an update from The Daily Beast indicated that it had posted a new article about what they were calling the "kamikaze" pilot. (I will not link to the article. It can earn its own clicks.) My gut seized. Why would anyone trivialize such a tragedy by using a word that has lost its original meaning and has now become a word we use to describe either a belly-flop into water, or a mixed drink that we use to get drunk. What could they have been thinking?
I sent them the following.
Dear “Editors,”
I have put your position in quotation marks because if the decision to refer to the air disaster that is currently playing out in the Alps as the work of a “kamikaze” pilot was your own, then I find myself wondering just what you have to do to be qualified to hold your position. Did you spend more than a fraction of a second thinking about the implications of the title? Do you know what kamikaze means in Japanese or what its meaning has come to be in American culture? Did you think about the fact that 150 souls—yes, they refer to them as souls, so it’s their word, not mine—that 150 souls were on board that plane? Did you perhaps assume that no one who had lost someone on that plane would ever see the callous treatment of mass death as if it were some cartoon spectacle for you to sell for a cheap click? Are you ashamed of yourselves yet?
You should be.
It goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway, that I am removing myself from your mailing list today. Now. At the moment that this letter is sent.
The human thing to do would be for the “editor” among you who made this decision to apologize.
The purpose of being a writer is to increase understanding in this world. To add to the empathy we have for one another. If you cause other human beings pain in order to make a buck, why not admit that what you are publishing is not writing or journalism or anything worthy of reading. You’re selling death porn.
In a way, your headline vivified reading that I had been doing just last night. I was reading a Nobel Prize winner, a writer whom I have admired since I was a teenager. He was criticizing writer friends of his who had attacked him for his public criticism of the murderous behavior of a country’s government that many in the artistic community thought should be above reproach because it was under attack from right-wing enemies who wanted to bring that government down.
He wrote:
“But it seems to me that there is another ambition that ought to belong to all writers; to bear witness, every time it is possible, insofar as our talent allows, for those who are as enslaved as we are. That is the very ambition that you questioned in your article, and I shall consistently refuse you the right to question it so long as the murder of a man angers you only when that man shares your ideas.”
It’s funny that the words written by Albert Camus in 1948 should feel so relevant now. Would you have perhaps shown a shred more decency if this air crash had taken place in the United States? Or do you only laugh and point at others if they’re foreigners?
Sincerely,
I realize that The Daily Beast doesn't care what I think of it, and my disappearance from its daily subscription list, and my decision to never visit its site again, will not do any damage. Unless, of course, those of you reading this were to make a similar decision. I can't speak for you.
But I refuse to add to a culture of death as entertainment. I refuse to support writing and editorial decisions that erodes the humanity of all who come into contact with its skeevy approach. It does no good to complain about this sick culture if one is willing to continue to patronize its merchants. I'm not willing to do that. I hope that some of you join me. Let editorial@dailybeast.com know that it has lost one more viewer. Sure. It's a grain of sand on the beach. But at least it might make you feel less polluted by having come in contact with its rot.
Eloquent and tough. You nailed the bastards. Brava!
ReplyDelete