Striving to Suffer

Wall Street Journal ^ | 19 March 2002 | Dorothy Rabinowitz

[BluesDuke]

By all accounts Kenneth Feinberg is a man blessed with large reserves of calm and confidence. Heaven knows the man appointed special master of the September 11 Victim Compensation Fund can use all the inner calm and security at his disposal. Mr. Feinberg, who has to decide the amount of the awards to be paid out to the families and victims had an impossible task to begin with--one made the more difficult by the anger and disappointed expectations of the victim families.

[BluesDuke]

Methinks the lady is bucking for a second Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary. The way she writes and thinks, they ought to retire that one in her honour.

[BluesDuke]

Just to get this one started...

[ValerieUSA]

Oops sorry, I didn't notice this. I was playing on the redhead thread. *L* I'll read it now.

[NYCVirago]

Since the sentencing Mr. Yates has gone about reciting the litany of offenses committed against him and Andrea. Yesterday he proclaimed his intention to sue the doctor who had treated his wife. Perhaps with time and contemplation, this latest exemplar of the victimology craze will sit down and figure out just who the actual victims were--all five of them.

Rusty won't even admit that his children were murdered -- he refers to them "passing on" and suffering a "terrible tragedy."

[ValerieUSA]

She switched gears in the middle of the commentary and never came back around full circle. It was like two different pieces.
As a widow (thankful for social security survivors benefits for my family - and managing to live on it plus some of my late husband's retirement funds), it's difficult for me to read something about people whining when they "only" get a $1.83 million settlement. Death will hit every family. Their situation is tragic, but not unlike everyone's situation sooner or later.

[BluesDuke]

I guess I must be a weirdo. I wouldn't exactly call what was done to those five children "passing on". I have a hard time thinking of murder or manslaughter as "passing on"...

[BluesDuke]

She switched gears in the middle of the commentary and never came back around full circle. It was like two different pieces.

Not exactly so; the full theme was the victimhood cult, and she discoursed on two of the most fresh examples thereof. Notwithstanding, the point about whining when you get "only" $1.83 million is a point well enough taken. As if that or any dollar amount can legitimately take the place of the loved one(s) lost.

[BluesDuke]

I should have said, more properly, discoursing about the victimhood cult and two fresh examples of how victimhood is contorted to no one's benefit. Apologies. Even I am prone to occasional awkwardness of expression.

[ValerieUSA]

awwwww, don't be so proper. You're cute when you're awkward. :) Nighty night

[BluesDuke]

You're cute when you're awkward.

Now you tell me. Where were you when I could have been the youngest 1962 Met? ;)

[ValerieUSA]

I think I was at the grade school where my Mom was trying to enroll me in Kindergarten a year early (it should be obvious why *L*) but they wouldn't take me. (Yes, that obvious). She couldn't get rid of me that easily!

[AmishDude]

Is this the conservative year for the dist. comm. Pulitzer? Seriously, they seem to alternate that award. Hey, you may know this: Is it possible to win two of those? I've always wondered why George Will only one one, in the 70's.

[AmishDude]

Make that "won one". It's too early.

[nopardons]

BUMP

[BraveMan]

Thanks to others in this forum I've been forced to rethink my long held position on this, and other, events where "victim status" is acheived.

On the one hand, part of me does not have a problem with individuals being compensated for their losses. On the other hand, as the article points out, that compensation serves to legitimize the continuation of victimhood as a social position. As ever increasing monetary awards are doled out, inequities develop for those who haven't received similar compensation.

Donations and gifts sent to the various charities (Red Cross, etc.) from the citizens of this great country are just that; gifts to be accepted or refused as the rightful recipient sees fit. To treat these donations as victims' entitlements skews the meanings and intentions of the givers, and perpetuates & legitimizes the social order of victimhood.

[ValerieUSA]

BUMP - good comments braveman

[ValerieUSA]

Another BUMP

[BluesDuke]

I have never heard of any columnist winning a second Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary, though I don't suppose it is impossible. Point well taken about George Will, though (it could be said, too, of William Safire); frankly, I can recall when such as Red Smith, Jim Murray, Murray Kempton (he was a liberal - but, all things considered, a kind of conservative one; and, as it turned out, he was the first liberal to renounce Bill Clinton before Droopy-Drawers got elected: it was the lying, stupid! is what Kempton was trying to say), and others received their Pulitzers very late in their careers, and observers suggesting they were getting theirs as much as lifetime achievement awards as anything, so overdue did they seem to those reading them for many years.

[AmishDude]

pulitzer.org has all the award winners. I guess I need to check nominees to see if it is possible for someone to win two, but looking in a few categories, I don't think any individual can ever win two (although, I think a given paper's editorial board could). I'll look more later.

[MozarkDawg]

Donations and gifts sent to the various charities (Red Cross, etc.) from the citizens of this great country are just that; gifts to be accepted or refused as the rightful recipient sees fit.

Just so, BraveMan -- why this passage from the author has me in agreement with the Dukester:

No one then stopped to worry about the complications that might follow--to warn about the reactions of victims of earlier terror attacks, for whom there was no such compensation plan. No one thought to anticipate the problems that would issue when some Sept. 11 families decided they deserved more compensation

I understand the horror, the shock when these terror attacks happened, but I'm still at a loss as to understand why death of a loved one from a terror attack is any more horrific or surprising than death of a loved one from being murdered in a grocery store hold-up or from the stoopidity of a drunk driver. Do we send these gifts out, make all this effort because of the numbers involved? And is that some kind of justification for griping, "It's not enough" or "How come I didn't get some too?" ??

I have a friend whose son was murdered in his home in the same vicinity a day after Bill Cosby's son was murdered in that freeway incident. It took YEARS for my friend and her family to see any kind of *justice* occur -- not nearly such a quick ending as the Cosbys got, if you could call it that. The reason you know Ennis was murdered and not my friend's son was certainly the celebrity of his father, and I don't deny the reality of that or the horror the Cosby family endured, just passing on the story as a way of noting that we do respond when we know of a situation.

I would like to think that had I lost a family member on Sept. 11, I would be grateful enough to know that the people of this nation were aware of my loss and joined in my grief, offered a few prayers even though they didn't know my relative personally. Insurance/death benefits ought to be enough -- the rest of us won't get any more than that.