Some observations on this whole Darrent Williams murder thing
January 4th, 2007
First, I didn’t know Williams. I’m not religious about football. The guy died 150 feet from where I live, and I guess that makes me feel weird / closer to his passing. Here are some of the things I’ve noticed since his death:
- People are definitely, definitely still racist. This event kind of brought them out. At my job we’ve had to delete a decent number of racist comments from the blog and article comments section. Okay, not a decent number. An indecent, way-too-large number.
- This event is a total rorshach (or is it litmus?) test for most people. As in, it accentuates whatever beliefs about football / crime / guns / religion / the afterlife / black people / white people / iraq / denver they already had. Look at it this way: most people usually believe they’re right. So, when big things in the outside world happen, and there’s some way to squeeze those events into their wrinkled/not-so-wrinkled concept of how the world works, those events get squeezed.
- Blogs are good for conversations, to a certain extent. Right now there are 665 comments on the entry about Williams’ death. Most of those comments are people shouting into the internet ether. A few address other people’s shouts. But 665 shouts does not make a conversation… honestly, I think the message board model is more suited for large-scale discussion / rants, and the obit guestbook for condolences and memories.
- Soldiers who die in Iraq don’t get nearly this much coverage because they die in Iraq, a country ten time zones away most of us have never been to and can’t imagine. Denver, on the other hand, is a place many more of us have been to, the Broncos is a professional football team, Williams didn’t take a particularly deadly job, and from all accounts he was passionate about life and about playing football. People with passion rock.
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