Arthur and Kevin's Nellorat ([info]nellorat) wrote,
@ 2006-08-19 08:34:00
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Morbid News-stravaganza
NATIONAL NEWS: On Thursday, I was all set to comment to student essays on the subway home from meeting with my business-writing student in Manhattan, except that (1) new 9/11 tapes had been released, and (2) a suspect was arrested in the JonBenet Ramsey case. A morbid-interest news-stravaganza!

Yes, I actually bought a New York Post.

My interest in the 9/11 tapes is a weird combination of morbid and uplifting--I've read reports, memoirs, etc., and many people showed a true, shining core of humanity in the dire circumstances. I deeply pray that I never get the occasion, but I also pray that I would rise to it as so many did, if I do.

The interest in the JonBenet case is half interest in moral slime (teaching in Bangkok, world center of child prostitution, f'ghu's sake) and half social analysis. If JonBenet had not been involved in the quasi-prurient world of child beauty pageants, would the press have been anywhere near as willing to blame the parents for her murder, with its sexual overtones? And why do child beauty pageants seem so sexual anyway? Is our definition of "beauty" for females that limited, or our definition of "adult" (which the kids emulate), or what? Would we be better off if we treated children more like little adults or more like their own people but quite different?

A FUNNY INCIDENT: I always bring food to the Asian school: I'm often there for hours (yesterday, eight); also, especially now, when I'm not watching my blood sugar that well, I never know when I'll go hypo. When I'm short on sleep, I include a baggie of coffee crystals, a baggie of Splenda, and a spoon.

Yesterday I did go hypo and ate all the food I'd brought. Oh, I needed coffee too, so I set that stuff out. I'd used a bag from the vet's to bring it in, and at the bottom of the bag I found a syringe--no needle, given us for administering meds to the rats.

So there, sitting on the table in front of the room, are an empty bigger bag, a small baggie of dark crystals, a small baggie of white crystals, a spoon, and a syringe.

I wanted to laugh. I wanted to tell the class why I wanted to laugh, but decided it wouldn't be prudent. "Ma, Dr. [Nellorat] made a joke about drug use in class today!"

Mood: cheerful, hard-working, energized by class ending Tuesday

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[info]supergee
2006-08-19 12:55 pm UTC (link)
There is some question of whether the guy who confessed really did it. I hope DNA settles it one way or the other.

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[info]lintilla
2006-08-19 01:05 pm UTC (link)
Which brings in another fascinating question (for me, anyway) - why would someone confess to a crime he didn't commit?

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[info]supergee
2006-08-19 03:10 pm UTC (link)
Because he's crazy
To become famous
Because he wishes he had...

And many more

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[info]al_qhadhulu
2006-08-19 05:16 pm UTC (link)
Have you seen what he wrote in a friend's high school yearbook and what a big deal CNN is making of it? I'm waiting for the press to find out that he's a whacked out fanboy of Aleister Crowley or Anton La Vey. Surely, that will be the next shoe-drop in this case...

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[info]nellorat
2006-08-19 10:05 pm UTC (link)
Yeah, I read in the Post (the shame, the shame) about the yearbook phrase and the acronym on the "ransom" letter. It seemed to me to probably be a coincidence, frankly. Or the kind of thing that a wacko would do.

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[info]jessicataggart
2008-08-11 06:46 pm UTC (link)
Jpbart wrote: This is the first of a series of bulletins When will the next shoe drop. Jpbart wrote: the flying site of 'El Peon', and the landing zone 'El Piano.

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[info]dallaswycoff
2008-08-11 11:16 pm UTC (link)
I personally think he got more famous because he's lived through a bunch of shootings. Who gave this guy the right to write music, yet star in his own autobiographical movie.

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[info]nellorat
2006-08-19 09:53 pm UTC (link)
What Supergee says, plus

because he's fantasized about it so much he thinks he has (which could well be true with the JonBenet Ramsey murder suspect)

because he wants to be punished

oh, and let's not forget because he police make them, but that doesn't seem to be at all the case here

For whatever reason, it really does go on. Scotland Yard had to get rid of droves of people falsely confessing to being Jack the Ripper.

It is fascinating. And you know, I have never read a book about the psyche of people who falsely confess to these thigs. I mean, there's the awesome Remebering Satan about a man brainwashing himself into false memories--and stuff about Henry Lee Lucas, who probably was a murderer but probably not of anything like the vast numbers he claimed--but I don't know of any book just about cases of false confession, showing all the various reasons and types of people. Hmm.

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[info]jeramysotta
2008-08-11 01:26 pm UTC (link)
So, you know, the arguments vary one way or the other about what you define and how you want to define it.

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[info]redbird
2006-08-19 01:31 pm UTC (link)
It seems to me that child beauty pageants seem sexual because the entire structure of beauty pageants is sexual: it's about judging people based on physical beauty and other attributes that may be considered attractive (such as singing ability).

If it weren't sexual, it wouldn't be a beauty pageant: it might conceivably be a fashion show, or a piano competition, rather than a spelling bee or footrace, but it wouldn't be a beauty pageant.

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[info]nellorat
2006-08-19 10:03 pm UTC (link)
I disagree with what you say, although I think that in our culture it's as close to true as matters.

But I strongly feel that while "beauty" does mean "attractiveness," sexual attraction is only one kind of attraction, and a different culture--I think a saner one--would have more room for aesthetic appreciation that was not sexual. Not that it would discourage sex-based beauty, but that it would encourage other types.

Why can't a human body also be beautiful in the way a tiger is, or a horse? I can admire bodily symmetry, muscle, form, and proportion; facial features, coloring, and composition; hair color and lines; and movement in ways that are all about beauty and not (or hardly) about sexual attraction.

Basically, I think that--largely due to our PLatonic-Christian heritage mixed with capitalist consumerism--our culture both worships physical desires and distrusts them. And part of this is that as a culture we tend to stimulate desire, but in safe venues--that is, venues that frustrate actually acting on the desire.

To be less theoretical and more practical-- I's have to research this, but I seem to recall pictures of people as Mrs. America, a pageant for (youngish) married women, and I seem to recall that they presented a less sexual but equally beautiful image. Less sexual than Miss America--even than the kiddie pageants!

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[info]redbird
2006-08-19 10:26 pm UTC (link)
I agree that beauty, including human beauty, is not always sexual. And that a different kind of culture would be better able to notice the other forms of human beauty, including human physical beauty.

The problem isn't beauty, or sex. It's the beauty contest, as created and maintained in our culture.

The beauty contest/pageant, as an institution, is sexual and competitive in nature. Part of the problem is that it is presented as competitive: where a gallery of nude photographs or paintings can say "here are a whole bunch of beautiful bodies," the beauty contest picks a single winner and separates her from the other people who are also getting up there to be looked at.

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[info]wild_patience
2006-08-20 03:36 am UTC (link)
I agree with you. I think part of what makes the children's pageant is that they seem to be made up as underage women (or women of a certain type as it's not typical of all women). They wear make-up and pose in such a way that kids their age on the street never would. That's what creeps me out -- they look like underage hookers.

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[info]dicotyledon
2006-08-20 01:54 am UTC (link)
LOL @ baggies and spoons! I actually keep a syringe in a glass of water next to my bed to squirt my cats when they're being naughty at 3am... classy!

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