AL Kennedy
Wednesday March 2, 2005
The Guardian
I lost a friend last week. These things happen - I'm bad at people, after all - but I can't say I'm not pissed off. Last week I also talked to a nice lady who was great at describing loss, the details of loss, the amputated future, the lack of company. Because I'm bad at people it took me a long time to remember she was so well-informed because her husband died a while ago. I mean, ages ago, but she hasn't forgotten him. Which is odd, isn't it ? She wants to be able to talk to her husband, I want to be able to talk to my friend - but we shouldn't. We should be over it.
How do I know? Because I should be caring about how a bony tart and a petulant clothes horse choose to christen their spawn. I should be fretting over whether a lack of established royal precedent at Windsor register office will cause Camilla to spontaneously combust. I should want to see more and more and more of Jimmy Carr. Then I would be part of the real world, the things that matter, the questions that deserve every scrap of media attention they get.
Particularly, I should keep away from anything to do with unpleasantness, injury, or loss - they have no place in a modern media environment. Take Lance Corporal Andres Raya. I shouldn't think about him. He's dead now. He made it through Iraq, went home to California and couldn't take it. He committed suicide by cop in a three-hour gun fight. But he doesn't matter. Or Baha Mousa, he's never going to get the kind of headlines he might if he'd shagged Jordan, or shat himself in a celebrity detox special. He's dead now. Our troops killed him. But if that matters at all it's as an indication of how stressed war can make the modern soldier. His brother Ala'a misses him, but he probably lacks perspective.
Abdul Wali, he's dead now. He died after being interrogated by a CIA contractor in Afghanistan, but so what? Then there's Zaydun al-Samarrai. He's dead now. His cousin Marwan Hassoun is upset about this, but you can be sure he's overreacting - after all Sgt Tracy Perkins, one of the people who drowned al-Samarrai in the Tigris, was only given a six-month sentence, so it can't have been a big deal. Hanan Saleh Matrud, she's dead now. After they shot her in Basra, the British army paid her family £390 compensation, which is fair enough because she was only eight and might not have amounted to much.
read the rest here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1428373,00.htmlGoddamn powerful stuff... spot fucking on.
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