#003 - Osama bin Laden, Your Death is Selling

Topical things don’t usually interest me. People tend to jump on a popular culture bandwagon for a day or two then completely forget about it, just to assure their place in society, and it annoys me (the Royal Wedding being one recent example). But with Osama bin Laden’s death, I’ll be honest, I’ve joined in a bit. I’ve posted joke statuses on Facebook and not been incredibly tasteful, but I think it’s acceptable with it being Osama bin Laden and all. He wasn’t exactly the warmest of folk, let’s face it

But I certainly haven’t “joined in” in this barbaric, medieval way of “yeah, bin Laden’s dead, fuck yeah!” that seems to be flowing round the world. There’s something really disturbing about that, the fact that people still celebrate death. Don’t get me wrong, I think bin Laden fully deserved it (don‘t get uber-liberal and say that no one deserves death; things aren‘t that simple), but people should be approaching this in a more 21st century way, not parading round the streets like psychotics. If that’s how we’re going to approach it, why not start accusing people of being witches and holding public executions again.

Someone I follow on Tumblr raised a good point: “if it was an American leader who had been killed, and people in the Middle East were dancing on the streets in celebration, it would be a completely different story.” If Barrack Obama had been assassinated and the people of the Middle East were holding psychotic death parades, there’s no doubt that the people of the Western world would be calling them barbaric and disgusting.

Just think about what you’re doing for one second. It’s not good.

SH.