Most of these so called tough ones are fearful little cowards, that think what JFK was doing was risky.. It just happened...
Baloney. With less than 100 flying hours, an unfamiliar aircraft, and no certification for night flying, taking off under those conditions was an act of blatant stupidity. If you were driving at 90 mph on wet roads, at night, and wrapped your car around a tree, would that have "just happened"?
I know some things about risk-taking behaviour; I paddle kayaks in white water and rough ocean, I climb mountains, I've worked as a war-zone journalist. I've risked my neck getting idiots out of situations they should never have been in, and I have no respect for people who don't know and respect their own limits, no matter who their daddies were.
Every day, thousands of people are shot, stabbed, blown up, tortured, maimed and killed in accidents that were far beyond their control, killed by diseases they don't understand, etc., etc., etc. Every one of them is at least as great a tragedy as some feckless dilettante flying his toy into the ocean. One wonders what he thought in the moment that he realized that money and fame wouldn't exempt him from paying the price for overstepping his bounds.
I can respect celebrities who earned their fame by their own achievements. But I don't see anything so special those who got famous because of their parents, or because of who they married. I certainly don't see any reason for the kind of sheep-like adulation we bestow on these people. |
