So, I'm on a rant. This news story that came up yesterday has been eating away at me, and I have to let it out. On my internet server, one of the daily news stories was about how this family's nightmare of their teenage daughter's death is still ongoing. So I clicked on the story. Turns out, this family lost their 18 year old daughter in a car accident. The main point of the story is that their daughter was more or less decapitated, to the point where even the parents were not allowed to see the body to identify it, but days after the accident, CHP officers leaked the photos of her body at the scene of the accident onto the internet, and now they are everywhere and it's been two years and the family cannot get the pictures removed because they are on over 1600 sites. The family had a $20 million lawsuit against the CHP, which they lost and are appealing.
Upon reading more, I learned that a few months before the accident, the girl had tried cocaine and had to be taken to the hospital because she had a chemical reaction to the drug (she had an inoperable brain tumor that she's known about since she was 8). The night before this accident, she had done cocaine again and her parents had drug tested her, took away her car keys, and were planning on admitting her to a hospital the next week.
As a result of being grounded, the next day she stole the keys to her father's Porche, went speeding down a highway over 100 mph, hit a Honda and lost control of the car. She had never driven this car before, btw. The Porche crossed all the lanes, the median, all the lanes of the opposite side of traffic, and crashed into a toll booth.
What bothers me is that the general outcry of the public is to have the photos removed because they are gruesome and hurtful to the family, and to remember the girl as the pretty innocent angel she was.
I will agree that the photos being online may be hurtful to the family, but that's about where my agreement stops. I don't think the girl was an angel - I think she was an idiot. How can you, knowing you have a brain tumor, decide to do the cocaine again? And then to be upset because you are being punished for doing it? And it's one thing to steal daddy's Porche, but it's another thing to drive it like you are on the Autobahn. Especially when you have no experience driving this car at all. She could have killed the driver of the Honda she hit, but no one is talking about that. And I'm not a parent. But I doubt her parents are deliberately looking up the photos of her death online. If I had a child, and my child made the decisions that led up to this result, I would ask that high schools and driver's ed classes use the photos as an example to teenagers to show them they are not invincible. I wouldn't want to see the photos everyday, but if I knew the photo made 1 person rethink how they drive, or whether to drive intoxicated, it would make a positive difference. Too many kids think they are invincible, especially behind the wheel of a car. Remember when Nicole Ritchie got arrested for driving the wrong direction on the 101 Fwy? She was intoxicated at the time. Look at Nick Hogan, who paralyzed his best friend for life. He was street racing, and then when the accident happened, he didn't want to do any jail time.
The general sentiment that the photos need to be removed and that the people who posted them are disgusting human beings makes me wonder about the naivety of the world. Everyone has a choice to look it up or not. If you can't stomach it, don't look. But don't look and then criticize because you don't like what you saw. I wonder to what extreme these people go to... should the medical examiner not do his or her job because the state of the body offends him/her?
That's just the first thing that's got me riled up. The next was an internet joke about the swine flu posted to a yahoo group that I belong to, and most people responded that they found it offensive. It was a picture of a dirty toddler kissing a dirty pig on the snout. It may not be funny to some people, but I think there's a difference between not funny and offensive. I'm not sure how that is offensive, unless you live in the woods and raise dirty toddlers. I think there's more offensive things going on around us on a daily basis. I'm lost as to other peoples' standards of offense. Does this mean I can say the economy is offensive, or the income tax percentage rate is offensive? Maybe next time I am out shopping, I can tell a woman her implants or her cleavage is offensive? Can someone come up to me and tell me that my weight is offensive to them? Can I tell a really hairy guy at the beach he is offending me? Where do we draw the line? A toddler kissing a pig. It may not be funny. That's fine. But does it really offend you? As part of the greyhound rescue, I watch all the time as a member of our group eats something, lets their dog lick the spoon, and goes right back to using the spoon themself. Offensive? I kiss my dog all the time on the snout. I also kiss her nose and her head. Once, I even pulled out a poo that wouldn't fall out of her butt so she wouldn't have to walk around with it dangling there. Offensive? I'm helping my dog not be humiliated. Maybe that is too much for some people to bear.
Maybe my weight is offensive to some people. Then again, maybe my losing weight is offensive to bigger people who think you can be proud at any size.
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There. That's my line and I'm drawing it.
Week: 17
Weight: 239.0
Weekly pounds lost: 3.0
Total pounds lost: 18.0
Size: 18
Goal: 150
Pounds to go: 89.0
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