Rubbernecking: This Country Loves Anguish

Let's face it. We live in a country that loves pain and suffering. If there are dead bodies to be seen we are there, one way or another, to look. Either with an eyewitness view or a channel changer. It's morbid, dark and very ugly.

But wait, it gets better.

Yesterday afternoon I was on my way home from the beach when we came across an accident on the highway going in the opposite direction. It was off of the road even off of the shoulder and yet, behind it, about 4 miles of traffic pileup. People making everyone late because, hell, they just had to see if there was blood, guts, pain and agony and gnashing of teeth. People running around on fire, screaming for mercy, crying for death to sweep down on quick winds and snuff them out. Fire and - well you get the idea.

I could ask why the hell people feel the need to see disaster, but why bother. I'll never get an answer, just a load of weak cop-outs. (Simulate really dopey voice here). "Well, you wanna know if they're allright." Bull. You want to see agony and death. You're intrigued by it.

TV proves it. We have a fascination with the macabre. Reailty ER rooms on so-called "educational channels" where people come in with a motor scooter half way up their ass, guys who had half of their head blown off and are carrying part of it in a bag, some poor sap who was cutting boards at a construction site and accidentally severed his own leg (thank God doctors were able to get to it in time and re-attach it, but what a story at Thanksgiving!)

This stuff wouldn't exist if we weren't watching it, but we are and we're watching it in droves.

So I pose this solution. Watch your circus of death at home, and when it's on the highway, just drive your damn car and don't hold up traffic to see "...if that poor lady went through the windshield."