What a despicable thing to say. What a lowlife you must be. What did John Jr. ever do to “deserve” to die – and for his never-to-be-born children to die – before the age of 40?
You are sick and twisted. Fortunately John Jr. is beyond your reach.
-Melin
Having grown up in a family that constantly flew in small planes from one destination to another, I’m perfectly aware that pilot error is a frequent cause of plane crashes, and am also aware how difficult it is to differentiate between the sky and the sea when an experienced pilot is flying.
However, to say that due to his inexperience as a pilot, this makes John F. Kennedy, Jr. a murderer of his wife and sister-in-law is assinine.
Pilot error equals human error. There’s plenty of that going around.
“There will always be somebody who’s never read a book who’ll know twice what you know.” - D.Duchovny
Mazey: “Pilot error equals human error. There’s plenty of that going around”
Talk about unadulterated asinine bullshit. As a pilot and as a son who grew up around a family and a community of pilots, I have had one thing and one thing only beat into my head regarding pilot safety, “You fuck up in a plane, you die, you fuck up in a plane with passengers, you murder them”
Taking yourself and two others in a flight where flight conditions were minimally suspect and infringing on night flying when you are a inexperienced pilot, with no instrument certification is a risk, no matter what the media will do to sugar coat JFK Jr.’s error in judgment. Now if he was the only person in the plane, it would be sad, but nevertheless a self-inflicting tragedy. However, the fact that there were two others on that plane, and they placed their trust and lives in his “implied” statements of ability, competency and decision making, makes his poor judgment, in my opinion an act of murder.
Now, I do not for one moment believe that he climbed into that plane for some crazy suicide mission, but as a pilot you take the lives of the people into your hands every time you have passengers in your plane, and if you let them down due to pilot error, you murder them. I can understand a non-pilot’s view that the prior statement is harsh and ridiculous, but I (and I hope you as well) would not fly with some one who does not have the same view that has been demanded of me.
Additionally, to say ‘that pilot error equals human error’ wreaks of a lack of personal accountability for your decisions, especially significant ones. Human error is cutting someone off with your shopping cart at the grocery store, forgetting to tell your wife that her mother called two days ago, booting a routine pop fly in right field. Human error is a mistake, where the consequences are impactful, but not dire or grave and should be forgiven with a minimal sincere apology. One of the major problems in this country (US) is our unbelievable ability to treat potentially life-shattering lapses in judgment as “human error”, or as a “mistake” and then forgive these mistakes as easily as we take out the weekly trash. Where is the personal accountability? When and where are we going to call people on what they are and what they have done, without worrying about how favorably they will be remembered.
Example: Two years ago, one of my ex-co-workers got drunk and offered his new hire a ride home from a work/social function, telling him that this would give them a “good chance to bond”. This drunk bastard then (at 80 mph) drove into a bridge support, killing himself and the new hire. Fast forward two weeks and I am asked by a co-worker if I would like to contribute money to fund a memorial in this SOB’s name. “Sure” I reply, “if the money will go to drunk driving awareness.” “Oh no, we don’t wont people to think of Steve as a drunk driver” the co-worker replied.
Why not, he did it didn’t he? If we won’t something good to come from this mess, the media should totally play up the fact that this was a PREVENTABLE tragedy, JFK Jr. fucked up, and all pilots and people thinking of getting their license should understand that this is not a hobby/game, it is a skill that take hundreds of hours of practice, preparation and dedication and that crashing your plane with two people in into the ocean it is not “human error” it is much, much more with deadly consequences.
Absolutely! And I wish people would get this thru their thick skulls when they’re driving a car too!
I think we’re really schizophrenic about this. I don’t think we’re hard enough on drunk drivers and alot of other people who put the lives of others in danger due to their own stupidity. If they hurt/kill themselves it’s definitely unfortunate but, often times, they hurt/kill an innocent bystander and that, in my book, is inexcusable. On the other hand, if you look at someone wrong, you’re lucky if you’re not sued.
This is the pit, right? So I can really say what I feel, right? Well you boomers are just goofy.
Allen Barnes, a black welfare recipient (poor, unbeautiful, unfamous), was shot in Gary Indiana. The police haven’t changed anyone at this time. We as a nation are spending considerably more expense finding the body of this “American royalty”. And why?
It’s the old myth that if someone is rich and famous and beautiful, then his life is worth more than yours. It’s elitist bullshit. That’s why the tabloids are still harping on Joan-Benet’s death, and no one cares when an ugly girl dies. (My apologies to The Onion.)
Six middle school kids were shot dead on their way to school by a gang last year. Right outside the school. What? You never heard about it? The news didn’t bother to do an expose? Maybe it’s because they were poor and black, and so we don’t consider their lives as important as the rich white kids at Columbine. When white kids get shot, our president makes a speech.
None of you knew JFK Jr. You just had this vicarious attachment to status and wealth through him, and it felt good. He wasn’t your friend. And if you can’t cry for Allen Barnes, but you get all tearry for Jon-Jon, what does that make you?
I choose to have compassion for people I know, to feel for the human pain and suffering that’s around me. But I don’t have enough emotions to spend them on everybody in the world that dies, and I’m sure as hell not gonna choose who I mourn for based on who’s pretty and rich.
Your Quadell
Right on! I do not get teh deification of folks who have it made. What talent does it take to be born wealthy. Of course he gave to charity…he had millions! Of course Di went to a lot of Charity functions…that was all she had to do!
I find it interesting that the people who hire body guards to keep people like you and I away from them are worshipped by people like you and I.
But I guess we need to create god’s on earth. The question is, why do we choose these people. But for that matter, why were so many concerned with Delta Burke’s marriage?
Not to in any way detract from Quadell’s excellent points, or to defned the cult of celebrity and elitism in this country…
APparantly one of the really wonderful things about JFK,J was that he was fully aware how undeserved and ludicrous the attention was. He recognized that because he could do nothing about it and that in some way he actually had an obligation to it and to the people. He was always kind, respectful and gracious to people (He did NOT hire body guards) and he was made fully aware that being born to privilege does not make you better, it means you must be a work harder to be a better person for it, by giving back , by doing what you can for others, by not being arrogant. And by all accounts (Before his death, the ones after dont’ count as much) he was all that and more, thanks to his mother.
And there is no escaping the fact that even though it’s somewhat ridiculous, he was our best link to his father, for those of us for whom that mattered. Like it or no, many people did love his father and his father was important to them, for good reason. And losing john is just… really, really sad.
So, there ya go.
Stoidela
Boycott shampoo! Demand REAL poo!
I have some bad news for you, Melin: We all deserve to die, and we’re all going to, some of us sooner rather than later. It’s called “life,” and sometimes it’s harsh, and it happens to rich people and poor people and old people and young people.
I’m reminded of the episode of “The Simpsons” in which Homer hears on the radio that the average male lifespan is 78 years or something. He says, “But I’m already 39! I’m only guaranteed another 39 years!” Bah. You, or I, could die in the next ten minutes, and the universe doesn’t especially care how old you were, whether you were ever born, what you did or who your family was.
I think you’re deifying this man and his clan just a little too much. I guarantee he wouldn’t have known you from Adam if he passed you on the street and probably didn’t care, either.
Great post, Stoidela. If all that’s true about JFK Jr, then I probably would have realy liked him, had I known him.
Your Quadell
I know many, many people who come to that realization.
You make it sound like he was an even better person because he had to overcome his wealth and privelege in order to realize that he had to be a “nice guy.” I mean! Anyone can be a really nice person if they are poor, but it takes a real GOD of a man to be nice when he is rich.
I can understand people of JFK’s generation following his family with interest…to a degree.
And speaking of his god-like father…are we talking about the same guy who was chowing pain killers, boozing it up and banging every chick he could inside of the nation’s capitol building?
Maybe Jon Jon was a super nice guy, maybe he was secretly a creep. I don’t know, and don’t care. THe fact that anyone even looks into these things proves that the cult exists. I just do not think it makes sense or is very healthy.
The guy’s dead. May he (and all of us) rest in peace.
In the first sentence of the last post, I am referring to the realization that you should be a kind person, not be a braggart and try to help others. This is a realization that millions make.
Sorry for the unclarity.
Mr. Z:
Actually, it IS harder to come to the realization that you should be a nice person when you are born to wealth, privilege, and completely unearned demi-worship just because of your DNA. Most people learn that lesson because if they don’t, their life experience will suck. People won’t like them, they won’t go very far. Most of us learn these lessons as part of our way of being successful and well-liked.
When you are John F. Kennedy, Jr. (Or one of any number of other celebrities, who seem to forget the lessons they learned when they were nobodies very quickly…imagine being BORN as Madonna or Micheal Jackson or Leo DiCaprio?) you could, if you wanted to, be the biggest prick in the world, and women would still want you, people would still want to be your friend, people would still say “how high” when you told them to jump. It happens all the time…people get money, power, and fame, and they turn into assholes. That he remained completely unaffected by it, that he actually looked upon it as an obligation IS a tribute to his character.
I’m not up for canonization, that’s ridiculous. But I’ve known enough famous people, rich people and powerful people to know that it is remarkable and laudable that he was, not just a good guy, but an EXCEPTIONALLY good guy.
Not to mention the fact that he was gorgeous.
Stoidela
Boycott shampoo! Demand REAL poo!
I have known some famous and/or rich folks who go both ways on this issue. Some are nice, some are jerks. They are Humans, they are a mixed bag.
One thing about being born rich and famous is that your actions are constantly scrutinized. One of my friend’s father had a Private Eye record over 700 hours of surveillance tape of him over 3 years. That was just one of them. So life will suck if you are rich and act like a dick. It will be all over the enquirer and Globe by morning. Even if you really are a jerk, you have to always act like a nice guy. I don’t buy it.
But I am not qualified to argue exactly what wealth does to you. My gut feeling is that when you are having trouble making rent, you are less likely to be charitable.
But if you have unlimited resources you can engage in the outward activities that are perceived as being charitable.
Ragardless, who gives a shit if he was nice? and if he wasn’t, who cares. there are millions upon millions of super nice people. In the end, does it matter if they became nice BECAUSE OF their position in life or IN SPITE OF their position in life?
I think you hit the nail on the head with you last line: He was gorgeous…
… and rich, and young, and famous. Which are the real reasons anybody cares. When the ugly Kennedy bought it by hitting a tree in Aspen, hardly a word was said.
Holding up Jon Jon as the ideal is like holding up super models as the body ideal.
I mean, I may be a nice guy, but I didn’t have to overcome my privilege. And I may be good looking, but I’m not rich.
And you may be a great woman and rich…but maybe you aren’t 5’11" and 119 lbs. Sorry, we only worship the skinny women and rich men here.
Come to think of it, JFK was rich and good looking and his wife was rich and good looking and skinny. Maybe they were the ideal American couple setting the tone, so to speak.
Quote (Melin) on me:
“You are sick and twisted. Fortunately John Jr. is beyond your reach.”
“I’m not dumb. I just have a command of thoroughly useless information.”
– Calvin and Hobbes
Mr. Z:
Not going to argue with the beautiful, rich and skinny stuff. Happens to be the ideal in this country, and there is no question that they embodied it.
But I think there’s a bit of unrealistic bullshit being thrown about here as well. Of COURSE nobody cares about the unknowns who have been dying over the past few days, or every damn day for that matter. Two simple reasons:
If we stopped to care about everybody who dies, we’d never have time to do/feel anything else. There’s thousands dying every minute, folks, and probably at least a few hundred dying young and violently.
We DID NOT KNOW THEM, or ANYTHING about them. yes, we did not “know” JFK, but we did know ALOT about him, from birth on. We had heard from him verbally and in writing, we knew all about his family and their history, etc. THAT is why we care about celebrity death, for the same reason we care about the death of not only people we truly care for personally, but people we simply KNOW (boss, acquaintance, guy who runs the local 7-11, whatever). It makes the death meaningful in a way the death of someone completely unknown to you does not. The more you know about the person (and the more you like what you know) the more meaningful the death becomes.
It’s simple logic, not a conspiracy.
Stoidela
Boycott shampoo! Demand REAL poo!
Stoidela, beautifully put.
I do not understand the interest in stars, or pro athletes or celebreties. I think that it is kind of sad and unhealthy. It is not like having a hero, say, Stephen Hawking. It is about something else. Maybe looks. MAybe envy.
THere is no conspiracy, just something in human nature that gets exploited by some industries. I just hate to see people getting sucked up in it. THere is actually pressure to act sad. As if to fail to be sad about his passing (or Di’s or the Columbine student’s) shows a lack of compassion. Not so.
Point number one hit is square on the head. I didn’t know him personally and seeing his mug screaming at Daryl hanna on the cover of the Enquirer didn’t make him nearly as close to me as the guy at the 7-11.
“Pilot error equals human error. There’s plenty of that going around”
Jahender: Talk about unadulterated asinine bullshit. As a pilot and as a son who grew up
around a family and a community of pilots, I have had one thing and one thing only beat into my head regarding pilot safety, “You fuck up in a plane, you die, you fuck
up in a plane with passengers, you murder them”
Murder, per Merriam-Webster is “the crime of unlawfully killing a person especially with malice aforethought.” I didn’t check into M-W for the definition of vulgarities.
“Taking yourself and two others in a flight where flight conditions were minimally
suspect and infringing on night flying when you are a inexperienced pilot, with no
instrument certification is a risk, no matter what the media will do to sugar coat JFK
Jr.’s error in judgment. Now if he was the only person in the plane, it would be sad,
but nevertheless a self-inflicting tragedy. However, the fact that there were two
others on that plane, and they placed their trust and lives in his ‘implied’
statements of ability, competency and decision making, makes his poor judgment, in
my opinion an act of murder.”
You're entitled to your opinion, but I don't believe he got into his plane with malice aforethought to kill himself, his wife and his sister-in-law.
“…as a pilot you take the lives of the people into your hands every time you have passengers in your plane, and if you let them down due to pilot error, you murder them.”
I'd be repetitive here...
“I can understand a non-pilot’s view that the prior statement is harsh and ridiculous, but I (and I hope you as well) would not fly with
some one who does not have the same view that has been demanded of me.”
Sorry....I get in commercial planes all the time, and have no idea of the pilot's personal viewpoints on this subject. I merely assume that the commercial pilot has no more wish to kill himself and his manifold passengers than I do. However, if given the choice to fly with an experienced pilot versus one with only a few hours under his belt, I'd pick the experienced one. By the way, do we KNOW how many hours JFK, Jr. logged in this particular plane?
“Additionally, to say ‘that pilot error equals human error’ wreaks of a lack of personal accountability for your decisions, especially significant ones. Human error is cutting someone off with your shopping cart at the grocery store, forgetting to tell your
wife that her mother called two days ago, booting a routine pop fly in right field.
Human error is a mistake, where the consequences are impactful, but not dire or
grave and should be forgiven with a minimal sincere apology.”
Oh, pullleeze. Human error is hardly limited to the cases to which you point. Dire consequences result from human error daily....what we now do is attempt to blame OTHERS for common human error.
“One of the major problems in this country (US) is our unbelievable ability to treat potentially life-shattering lapses in judgment as “human error”, or as a “mistake” and then forgive these mistakes as easily as we take out the weekly trash. Where is the
personal accountability?”
In the courtrooms...daily.
“When and where are we going to call people on what they are and what they have done, without worrying about how favorably they will be remembered.”
Again...in the courtrooms. Or...in the press.
I'm terribly sorry about your experience with a drunken ex-co-worker. I believe your response was right on. You preferred to put your money into something that would make people aware of the problem source.
But please also don't assume that JFK, Jr. set out Friday night to murder. That's purely offensive.
Example: Two years ago, one of my ex-co-workers got drunk and offered his new
hire a ride home from a work/social function, telling him that this would give them a
"good chance to bond". This drunk bastard then (at 80 mph) drove into a bridge
support, killing himself and the new hire. Fast forward two weeks and I am asked by
a co-worker if I would like to contribute money to fund a memorial in this SOB’s
name. "Sure" I reply, "if the money will go to drunk driving awareness." "Oh no, we
don’t wont people to think of Steve as a drunk driver" the co-worker replied.
Why not, he did it didn't he? If we won’t something good to come from this mess,
the media should totally play up the fact that this was a PREVENTABLE tragedy, JFK
Jr. fucked up, and all pilots and people thinking of getting their license should
understand that this is not a hobby/game, it is a skill that take hundreds of hours of
practice, preparation and dedication and that crashing your plane with two people
in into the ocean it is not "human error" it is much, much more with deadly
consequences.
“There will always be somebody who’s never read a book who’ll know twice what you know.” - D.Duchovny
I’ve had an epiphany about how to explain why we feel the way we do about John’s death or similar celebrities.
It’s exactly the same emotion we have when we WATCH A SAD MOVIE. Why do we cry at a movie? Not only do we not know those people, the characters aren’t even REAL, yet we cry when it is sad.
Same thing here… John’s life has been a really long movie with a really attractive and appealing character who comes to a sad end.
There ya go.
Stoidela
Boycott shampoo! Demand REAL poo!
Ooops. My message was supposed to end before Jahender’s example. Sorry I forgot to delete the rest of his message.
Stoidela, your postings are right on. I’m always pleased to read your offerings.
What offends me is all the bad writing that a death like this, or Diana’s, elicits from the media. I am genuinely saddened by these deaths–but if I have to see one more photo of little John-John saluting while syrupy music plays in the background and an announcer reads Barbara Cartland phrases about “America mourns for its Crown Prince,” I will YIP. Isn’t the bare-bones story sad enough without all the gag-making Kewpies and violin music?
By the way, I have been reading this message board for months and have just logged on, so a first hopeful “hello” to you guys and gals . . .