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Jewish World Review April 23, 2007 / 5 Iyar, 5767 Tragedy, American-style By Tom Purcell
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
I'm still upset by the news from last week!
That a psychopath named Cho Seung-Hui slaughtered 32 innocent young people — people with promising futures who had plenty to contribute to the world?
Well, that, too. But I was talking about Sanjaya getting voted off "American Idol." It broke my heart.
Untold pain and suffering have been inflicted on innocent people, yet you're wrapped up in a silly television show? You're really going to have to explain.
Well, didn't everybody love Sanjaya? He was a young, gawky kid with a marginal voice. There was something about him that made you want to root for him. He dropped out of high school to focus on his singing. His story was so fascinating.
Ah, yes, a nice story line is what we all need. It brings clarity to an unclear world. It helps us make sense of the irrational. Such has been the fascination with Sanjaya, a 17-year-old singer who can't sing. And such has been the way our media deals with a complex world.
But he's so wise for such a young person. He said he never looked too far into the future. He said that every week he focused only on surviving the show for another week. We should all heed his sage advice.
We should all enjoy Sanjaya's story — just as we enjoyed another story not too long ago. Don Imus said nasty things about women college basketball players on his radio show. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton got massive media attention by raking him over the coals. Imus got fired. And everyone was delighted that race relations had taken a step forward, though they probably took several steps backward. Still, what a tidy story.
But Sanjaya got fired, too. He said he had a bad feeling when he saw the show on Tuesday night. But when he got voted off, he did it with such grace. He said the important thing was that the experience helped him to grow.
Many have been trying to form a nice story line around the Virginia Tech massacre, as well. Different constituencies are trying to use the tragedy to advance their own stories and agendas. Right out of the gate, The New York Times decided that guns, more so than psychopaths, are the problem.
I know what you mean. Some people thought Sanjaya's weird hairstyles, more so than his awful voice, was his problem.
Pretty soon a million other explanations surfaced. Cho was bullied when he was young and we should sympathize with him. It was the drugs he was on that caused him to act — or the lack of drugs. It was because mental-health funding wasn't high enough at his school. Or it was the violence in the movies he watched and his need to emulate violent characters.
I know what you mean. Everyone is trying to understand why Sanjaya got voted off the show when the real issue is his future. He said he hasn't got any offers yet, but he'll only choose opportunities that he feels strongly about. The most important thing is for him to be true to himself.
The truth of the matter is there are no easy explanations. Sometimes things go wrong — people go tragically wrong. Maybe it was purely psychological in his case; maybe Cho was just born nasty and mean. Maybe it was pure evil.
Maybe Sanjaya was born to act and his stint on "American Idol" was his ticket to an acting career.
The truth of the matter is we need to fight the American urge to marginalize and categorize this horrible event into a tidy little story line just so we can sleep better at night. We need to fight the urge to use the Virginia Tech massacre to advance our little agendas. We need to wake up fully and embrace the ugliness and awfulness of it fully. We should be angry that such evil has happened. Aren't you angry?
Sure, I'm angry. I just hope to deal with it gracefully, just the way Sanjaya has dealt with his anger.
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© 2007, Tom Purcell |
Mitch Albom | |||||||||||
