By now, many of you have probably heard the rumors circulating that Gary Coleman's wife, Shannon Price, sold photographs of his final moments in the hospital to tabloid magazines. Whether or not the rumors are true (I suspect that they are), the real issue for me would be that "I am Jack's utter lack of surprise." I suspect many other Americans are probably feeling the same. Imagine two separate, but perhaps equally as damning, realities: one, that a huge percentage of people in this country actually wants to be famous; and two, that many of those who don't would still sneak a peek at dying person to gratify their own personal voyeurism.
I'm telling you the God honest truth here. Sometimes I think I am must be from some other planet, because any similarity I might have with the above defined 'human' population is 100% beyond my ability to comprehend. While it is certain that we must carry some semblance of each other in our respective DNA, I find it difficult to believe that we have anything else in common.
On the first point, the "need to be famous," who'd ever really want it? Would trading everything remotely sacred about life be worth it? Would handing over every last bit yourself to the public be worth the trade-off? In my generation it was Princess Diana's tragic car crash. It's just simply unfathomable, being on either side of those cameras. Taking your last breath while flash bulbs erupt and light reflects off a pool of your own blood. What a hellish way to go, far more torturous than dying beneath a pinned car. Adding insult to injury, even your last breaths couldn't be taken in peace. And please don't get me started on the human parasites on the other side of the lens. In Princess Di's case, those leeches should have been tried for involuntary manslaughter as not a one of them even offered up their shirts to soak the blood. They just kept snapping away, picture after picture; image after gruesome image.
As a pastor of a few years, I can tell you that spending time with the deceased and their families isn't something to plaster across the media. It's a sacred time and as if our culture hadn't already pissed away enough of the sacred through selfishness, greed, and materialist philosophy, our intrusion into the wretched corners of our humanity finds new ways to rear its ugly head. This is the vile fruit growing from the twisted seeds we have planted. This act of human depravity springs up from our new ideological soil, a world view of utter naturalism that rejects the premise that anything in this world is sacred at all.
On the second point, as terrible as Shannon Price's alleged activity may be, doesn't the real blame fall on the shoulders of an American populace which finds no better solace for its many bored and empty lives than to commit a sadistic voyeurism upon other human beings? I am reminded of the way in which serial killers immortalize particular body parts of their victims in hopes of being able relive the thrill of their kills; or the way in which famous figures executed throughout history have been dismembered with their body parts spread around areas of town for all to see. One need not think too much beyond the murder of Neda Agha Soltan in Iran last year and the bystander who managed to capture it on his cell phone video camera, or the numerous stonings of women emerging from the Middle East as they have been caught on cell-phone cameras. These activities, coupled with the American hypocrisy named 'paparazzi,' remind us how little ground we've gained since the ancient Roman arenas and gladiator conflicts. Life and its end are still treated as sport to a great many people.
And such are the offerings of inhumanity littering our supermarket checkouts, right next to Pez dispensers and Snickers bars. Give us another life to follow, and another death for which we are invited to serve as humble spectators. Keep it at a distance though, so the blood won't spill on our shoes.
The Romans had to build 'vomitoriums' into their coliseum seating in order to keep onlookers from puking on each other. And I have to say, as I pause to consider my role as a human person in this tepid and sickened America that we have constructed, that I find myself looking for my own pail at the very thought of anyone wanting to buy Gary Coleman's death pictures, or even look at them.
And I refuse to apologize for calling the voyeurs of wealth and fame anything other than what they are: sadistic, empty shells of humanity needing to reclaim something long since lost. And I must add, that given this morally relativistic age in which we live, I am totally incapable of simply chalking this one up to "Different Strokes."
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