Why Mourn for Morons?

Gotta say writing a blog post without a lot of time at your disposal is a very hard task. Thats why I think I will limit myself to non-working weekends only. You were so right, Arpit. Goddamnit!

iWhy

Ever since Steve Jobs died, seems like he took away a lot of the world with him.[1]  Thats what the media seems to say these days. And almost half of the people I know too. And almost all the people in my generation. And...

You know what, this does not irritate me. Not at all. What fills me with rage is  the compassion we show for dead celebrity morons, when so many living people live the medieval life: nasty, brutish and short.[2] Not only this, watching so many people almost pray some living persons (Beckham, anybody?) makes this even more pitiful, cause I can't think of a more miserable word right now.

Have some more
Remember Michael Jackson. Yes, that Michael Jackson. ....it don't matter if you're black or white; ...... All I wanna say is that they don't really care about us; ..... The dude was a great artist. Sure. But he was *not* a very good human being[3]. That person's actions introduced the word 'paedophile' to me. People actually cried at his death, notwithstanding the fact that there are folks in the Third World who are not dying, just waiting for death for I-don't-know-how-long.[4]

Remember Tiger Woods? Boris Becker? Hillary Clinton's husband/Monica Lewinsky's boyfriend?

Closer to home, I remember a friend Abhinav[5] telling me he once saw the great (still alive) Mr. Amitabh Bacchan (never mind the spelling) appearing in a talk show. Nothing exceptional, except the agenda for the talk: Human Rights! I mean, what the **** does he know about human rights? Are the channel guys not idiots for calling him and broadcasting the show? Are we not even bigger idiots for watching the show? [6]

A great take on the topic of following what the world tells you (though from a different viewpoint) is from TheBluntBlogger: they have enough sheep out there, be human for once and stand for what you believe in.

The world has more important things to worry about
Believe me. It has. What did iPhones do for the poor and starving millions?[7] Since when was Michael Jackson a great person (artist: yes, person: I don't know)?

Since when did the fourth estate get on to promoting such things? I remember watching the details of a day's working in the (Indian) Parliament only during the recent Civil Society's (Anna Hazare etc.) protests for the Jan Lokpal, after at least a solid two years.

Maybe its another facet of the Human Condition.[8] We ignore things that seem unpleasant, no matter how important they may be. But as individuals, it is our duty to not believe what is being told or done, and investigate for ourselves. I know it is mine. And I've never been comfortable adoring a celebrity. Mr. Toor, remember my views on Sachin Tendulkar?

[1] Sorry for not using an upper case 'H' with him, Steve-fans.

[2] I read it somewhere. If you have seen movies depicting that time, or read (fiction or not) books/novels, you can relate.

[3] Or I read/watched newspapers/news channels from another planet. 

[4] Hunger/Conflict/Disease/Genocide/Blood-diamonds.... the list surpasses my imagination.

[5] aka Pondy bhai

[6] As animal rights groups say, when the buying stops, the selling will too.

[7] India-educated guys, remember the Bapu's Talisman  in our NCERT books?

[8] Not that I am into philosophy or anything.

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EDIT: This post seems even more accurate in retrospect of Dennis Ritchie's death. For those not from a Computer Science background, he was the creator of the C programming language. An operating system called UNIX was (almost) remade in C, and most of today's operating systems including MS Windows and Apple's iShit are based (based as in having in their foundation) on C. Why there was no hype around Ritchie is obvious: there was no not much target audience for the media, and there was no new iPhone model to be released a few days later.