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Pastimes : JFK Jr., Is this an assasination? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mary Baker who wrote (81)	7/20/1999 7:26:00 PM
From: PCModem	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542

Hi Mary Baker I've been joking a bit about this situation, but your comments bring up an important component to all of this IMHO. Even though you don't use the term, you are talking about the phenomenon of celebrity. JFK jr was a celebrity. Not yet really in is own right, but it looked like he was heading in that direction. Celebrities idealize for us aspects of life -- success, wealth, popularity, beauty, and even failure. Most of us think our lives are mundane. Celebrities' lives are not mundane. There are celebrities who are such only for a moment. OJ in his slow drive to Brentwood is mimicked by gang member wannabes car jacking and joyriding. We like to watch neighborhood houses burn down, no matter how badly we may feel for the victims. Same with accidents on the highway. In October 1993 I got on the roof of my house so I could watch hundreds of homes in Pasadena, CA burn down during that horrible week of out of control fires. I saw it on TV and realized that it wasn't something happening some place else, but it was in easy viewing distance in realtime. I had to go see for myself. As for why you feel as you do...and why I may feel differently: We have to realize that much of how we respond has to do with temperment. As well as our personal experience in life. It does not mean necessarily that I am heartless or you are overly sensitive. (I'm using you as an example here -- this is not meant to be any kind of criticism of your response nor a defense of mine, just a discussion of the differences.) Our technology has developed to the point where a certain 'normal' desire to see celebrites can be satisfied in a way unimagined before. So we OD on OJ. We cry ourselves to sleep over the death of Princess Diana. And everyone drops everything to follow the suitcase by prescription bottle account of what washes up on the shore of some Island of the Rich and Reckless. The above has NOTHING to do with losses experienced by those who personally knew the three who died. Their losses are the only real ones. My heart goes out to them. The rest of us have lost nothing except the time we've spent watching the news about the celebrities. Everything else is a creation of our own minds. A function of the effect of celebrity. A contrast of our mundane lives to their celebrity deaths. Because I did not know them: Why should I cry? As mundane as my life may be I still have it. I should be rejoicing. Thanks for listening. PCM