EPTI am, generally, disgusted by the attention the bombings have received. This voyeurism is destructive and cruel. The predatory media and a public always hungry for spectacle have made this tragedy into a macabre festival. The dead ought to be truly and deeply mourned by those around them. The lives of the survivors should be celebrated, and their wounds treated. But the tragedy is the weight of human suffering, not the circumstances accompanying it. These deaths are no more or less significant than the 40 who die violent deaths every single day. This attention, these statuses saying "my heart goes out to those affected," helped no one. This is activism that strives to express sympathy and outrage without requiring any commitment or action. It is an obscene trivialization of death and the grieving process.
Our campus is closed today, no one is allowed out of the building, in order to "protect us from the media vultures." But were it for Day of Silence, I would have loved to be interviewed. I have a gift with words. I wouldn't have been listened to, or even widely heard. But nevertheless it would be a great gift to have been able to share my thoughts out loud.
Instead, I wrote them down here. True, I'm adding to the flood. But I think my message is substantively different from the rest of what is being circulated, even from those arguing that we when we publicize these tragedies "the terrorists win," although I don't disagree with them. And what I say is rooted in a deeply held belief and an emotion that had to be expressed, not an offhanded, polite sympathy. I don't know for sure whether that's enough to make this worth sharing, but I didn't feel like I could keep it to myself.
