How about that? First time in sixty years, midnight b'day visitor to Poe's grave didn't show up. Wonder why? Oh, here it is! Fox News analyst Karl Rove says the no-show was a referendum on the Obama admin.
That Edgar Allan Poe though, quite an enduring figure. Yeah, there's something romantic about artists who die in the gutter, but there's more to it. Invented the detective story. About the first horror writer too. "Raven" is a great poem; the cadence of it is hypnotic. As if that wasn't enough, think about this? If Edgar Allan Poe had never written anything, what the heck would Vincent Price have been doing in the 1960s' anyhow? Maytag repair man commercials maybe?
Poe just understood, folks enjoy reading fiction about horrible things. Doubly odd that, considering there's plenty of horror available without resorting to fiction.
Now that guy who died in the English channel (I bet the French don't call it that) this week? It's sad but it's not horror. He was going to fly his micro-light around the world, but made it less than 100 miles. Well, he made his call. Our species needs a certain percentage of very daring people like that. He was a smart guy; must've known there's some reason micro-lights come with a complementary toe tag.
Haiti now, that's a horror. It was fairly horrible before the earthquake. Hmmm, what'd the US casualty ratio be? About 3M deaths. Haiti just had equivalent of a thousand 9/11's.
So I'm thoroughly bemused by objections in the US for Royal Caribbean docking in Haiti. Yeah yeah yeah, it "looks insensitive." Therefore the couple dozen Haitians who have full time employment because of cruise ship traffic, they can't have jobs anymore? If anything, more cruise ships should be stopping. After all, it's not disaster tourism. Those who bought cruise tickets didn't cause the earthquake. Ship anchors just off isolated cove, go ashore have the beach BBQ and tip heavily.
Sometimes a thing can look insensitive, but it's the right thing to do.
No comments:
Post a Comment