Enough Already

Yeah, I know it's been a while, but there's nothing like disgust to get one blogging again.

I saw something today that made me sick: Trayvon Martin’s dead body.

The photo, posted by Gawker, was allegedly meant to spark anger, not pageviews. The Root has a great rebuttal to this rationalization, and my cynicism in Gawker’s motives is why I’m not linking to it. (As if I have that many readers!) If you really want to see it, I’m sure you can find it.

I honestly didn't realize that when I clicked on the link from another story that that is what I would see. Though I should have known better, knowing how Gawker Media operates. My immediate reaction was to look away, scroll down so it was out of sight, and close the page. What his family must feel like, knowing this image is out there, open for commentary, I thought. 

The whole thing reminded me of another recent occurrence that involved a graphic photo. A man recently committed suicide by jumping in front of the elevated line in Astoria. The event got very little press, despite the fact that his body parts wound up strewn all over the street. At 4 o’clock in the afternoon. A time that, as some of my Astorian Facebook friends noted, children where headed home from school. Gothamist linked to some tweets that had images of the severed body parts on the street (which is a whole other outrage). My morbid curiosity got the best of me, and I clicked. Then I shrugged. It looked like nothing more than a scene from a horror movie. Yes, I was disgusted with myself for several reasons, but was most struck by my “meh” reaction. Had I become that desensitized to violence?

That image of Trayvon Martin showed me that I had not. Sure, I wasn’t prepared for it, and unlike the Astoria man, Trayvon didn’t choose to die. But by clicking to see either photo, what I showed was disrespect. If I need to see gore that badly, I should go see a horror film. And so the next time I’m confronted with a graphic image of a dead body, I’m not going to look at it, morbid curiosity be damned.

Also, I’m never reading Gawker again.