At some point, you might have convinced me that the American public was generally good. Stupid, but good. So when a plane, train, or space shuttle should happen not to make it to its destination in one piece, the American people might feel some sort of emotion that resembles the not very uncomfortable feeling you get when you hear that your third-favorite 1960s sit-com actor kicked the bucket:
"I loved that guy! What was his name again? Oh, whatever. Could you pass the butter?"
The reason that such a trivial emotion would be good, in my estimation, is that it would be honest. The lives of, say, seven individuals in a vehicle burning to death would rightly cause a tinge of regret. Maybe even a tad of disappointment. If you happened to be watching the whole thing live on cable news, possibly even as much as a dollop of dismay.
But what the big, fake, media-fabricated pretense of an American public is feeling (not the actual public I see on a daily basis) is something more akin to what you feel while watching your first born placed head-first into a blender set on purée while both your parents are forced at gunpoint to rape your best friend's dog.
No one even knew the Space Shuttle was in space, for Christ's sake!
The Columbia accident was a tragedy. No shit. But the way the media has been portraying the public at large is like we actually have displayed one iota of interest in science within the past decade. I actually heard Peter Jennings say that Americans were "holding back tears" as a result of the accident.
Are you fucking kidding me?
