comment #1

RaRun says ...

Jeff -- you are being oblique in your reference to Maher's remarks, aren't you? You don't really think it was the "9/11 attackers weren't cowards" portion of Maher's remarks that caused the crapstorm that descended on him. If he had said just that, surely there would have been plenty of griping from the unstable portion of the right side of the blogosphere, but it was the follow on accusation of cowardice on the part of the US by choosing to respond with cruise missiles instead of up close and personal that got him into trouble.

comment #2

Mr. Muckle says ...

Due respect and this isn't really pointed at the gruver, but imo, wanting to know why is the dimbulb response. You can never really know the why of anything, but you can dumb it down into some simplistic formulation (generally a self-serving philosophical or political or economic justification) and if that satisfies you, then re-read my first sentence.

Why did you die? How about why were you born? Not a clue, but you can accept some assclown's version of theology and run around like you know everything now. What? People campaign for office on that basis? Oh no!

Why did they start a war in Iraq? Bush's vengeance? Oil? Stamping down militant Islam? All simplistic answers, but if a person is really serious, he could follow the trail of causes forever and ever and never come to the actual beginning of them. Why was there a Big Bang, if you want to go that way.

More useful is "What?" What is death, after all? What is life? What are you? What is film? What is naked, unqualified political ambition? What is peace, nonviolence, morality?

But simplistic, lazy minds never ask serious questions, talk about low-info. And if they did it wouldn't do them any good, anyway. We should forget about answers and see if we can manage to ask a decent question.

comment #3

Sonic Boom says ...

Why do some people always try to connect the latest hurricane with global warming? Massive hurricanes have been striking us forever. I can only imagine the hysteria of those people if a storm the size of Hurricane Camille hit us today.

comment #4

Deathtongue_Groupie says ...

Another thing that people don't seem to understand in this "everything is explainable" culture of Discovery Channel, Wikipedia and TMZ is that many suicides are mysteries never to be solved. Friends & family simply know that the person was unhappy, but because in the real world suicide notes are not common the final trigger will never be known.

There is also the stigma of suicide and the fact that as time goes on many suicides become known as much for their final act as their creative works. Kurt Cobain to me is the guy who couldn't just walk away from the fame that was making him miserable and instead selfishly left his daughter alone in the world with a wacko mom.

But why you have to know less than 24 hours the what's & why's of Wallace's demise many will wonder. Let everyone grieve and remember the best of a person before you start dissecting the corpse.

comment #5

Deathtongue_Groupie says ...

RaRun - 20 idiots in Texas were responsible for the "crapstorm" that came down on Maher and their unAmerican response is what prompted FedEx & Sears to shit on the Bill of Rights. Which is why to this day I will not use either.

comment #6

Josh Massey says ...

"...is what prompted FedEx & Sears to shit on the Bill of Rights."

I actually had no problem with what Maher said - the attackers were certainly evil and followers of a malignant dogma, but they were anything but cowards. I'd love to hear an explanation behind this statement, though.

Please don't tell me you're referring to "freedom of speech." Please.

comment #7

MathewM says ...

So when the "big one" finally hits California or LA burns from uncontrollable wildfires I can safely say it was a case of the chickens coming home to roost for Los Angeles/San Francisco.

How is that Jeff Wells can't make an observation nowadays without throwing some idiotic political knock against someone that lives outside of his wax ball of liberalism?

comment #8

RaRun says ...

Deathtongue_Groupie

Hey, you're OK by me to boycott Sears and FedEx for whatever reason on which you care to make moral decisions with respect to your commercial dealings, though like Massey I am interested in seeing how you get from the Bill of Rights, which limits only governmental action, to the decision making process at FedEx and Sears. My point was that Maher didn't get in trouble for calling the terrorists brave (and I am with Massey again on my opinion of them), he got in trouble by saying the US responded in a cowardly fashion. Now way Maher loses his show (and in your view, the Bill of Rights gets soiled), if he had stopped at conceding the lack of cowardice on the part of 9/11 attackers.

comment #9

Michael Williams says ...

I think the reason you're not supposed to say "that Hurricane Ike was a case of the chickens coming home to roost for Houston/Galveston" has nothing to do with political correctness and everything to do with the fact that, true or not, it's an incredibly crass thing to say. And if your point about global warming is true (which it is, of course!), there are far more effective ways of making that point that don't invoke the culture wars and contribute to the shrill banality of public discourse.

And no, wanting to know why DFW killed himself does not make you a monster (incidentally, I don't see anyone saying this). You're right that it's among the first people most people think when they hear news like this. However, I'm guessing his family don't want to be exposed to public speculation about it.

comment #10

MathewM says ...

He probably suffered from over thinking. When I get really depressed it's usually because I'm thinking too much. Even if you're an observer rather than a participant by nature you have to sometimes just live and enjoy life on instincts.

comment #11

YRG says ...

Actually, my first question was "how?" I'm just upset because now, like Hunter S. Thompson, all of David Foster Wallace's writings are overshadowed by how he chose to end his own life. He's been on my list of authors to read for awhile now, and now when I read The Broom of the System or Infinite Jest, I will have to say to myself, well he killed himself in the end, rather than take his words as something to live by. It would be much different if he were killed in a plane crash or a car accident.

comment #12

Jack South P.I. says ...

From page 696 of the hardcover edition of Wallace's Infinite Jest, one of the great books I've read in my life:

The so-called 'psychotically depressed' person who tries to kill herself doesn't do so out of quote 'hopelessness' or any abstract conviction that life's assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire's flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling 'Don't!' and "Hang on!', can understand the jump. Not really. You'd have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.

comment #13

Jack South P.I. says ...

(I left out a key sentence the first time, sorry.)

From page 696 of the hardcover edition of Wallace's Infinite Jest, one of the great books I've read in my life:

The so-called 'psychotically depressed' person who tries to kill herself doesn't do so out of quote 'hopelessness' or any abstract conviction that life's assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire's flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It's not desiring the fall; it's terror of the flame. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling 'Don't!' and "Hang on!', can understand the jump. Not really. You'd have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.

comment #14

frankbooth says ...

Thanks for posting that, Jack South.

There you have it, in the author's own words. The more logical question to ask is why more people don't kill themselves.

comment #15

lionsfan says ...

Does this have to be repeated? Okay, I guess it does. What was exceptionallly stupid about Bill Maher's showily self-important "offhand" remarks about 9/11 was his assertion that the hijackers weren't cowards. Because brave men don't hijack planes full of innocents and fly them into buildings., honest. Only cowards do that. (Really, there is much else these "brave" folk could have done that wouldn't have cost innocent lives.)

That Maher and his fans and defenders don't realize there is such a distinction merely indicates how blinded they may be by their own core contempt for America. And how stupid and morally confused.

comment #16

Richardson says ...

"Because brave men don't hijack planes full of innocents and fly them into buildings., honest. Only cowards do that."

What does morality have to do with bravery?

comment #17

lionsfan says ...

Silly me, Richardson, I thought one of the foundations of Judeao-Christian morality was the Ten Commandments, and one actually says "Thou Shalt Not Kill." (Particularly innocents, I think, is the unspoken corollary here.) However 'brave' it may look to the morally myopic like Bill Maher and maybe even yourself.

comment #18

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