Crimson & Crowley: Putting your foot in your mouth, Ebert style

The Internet has replaced television, radio and print as the primary source of information for many people, especially those belonging to the younger generation. 

We become aware of world-changing events through blog posts, Twitter and Facebook status updates.

The ease and anonymity of the ‘net’ is a double-edged sword.

On one hand, it’s great that using a screen name allows one to speak freely without fear of reprisal, but on the other hand, it’s made some people feel free to be as malicious as possible. 

Take the comment section on any YouTube video.

The longer a video stays up, the more likely the comments are to devolve into an orgy of racism, homophobia and political bickering, regardless of the video’s subject. This tendency toward unkindness is best illustrated by the response to the death of any celebrity.

When “Jackass” star Ryan Dunn died June 20, most people commenting on his death fell into one of two camps.

There were those who were sincerely upset by his passing and those who saw his death as an excuse to tear into him, like a couple of five-year-olds with sugar rushes set loose on a piñata.

“Friends don’t let jackasses drink and drive,” Roger Ebert said in a tweet, just hours after the news of Dunn’s death hit.

Ebert’s Facebook page was awash in a sea of vitriol, and many of the users went beyond merely criticizing him for his tweet and made fun of his appearance. Ebert’s Facebook page was temporarily shut down due to complaints made about his tweet, though Facebook said the page was deleted in error.

I found it to be the height of hypocrisy that commenters who were upset by Ebert’s apparent lack of empathy would attack the physical appearance of a man left disfigured by numerous cancer treatments.

There were some legitimate criticisms to be made about Ryan Dunn — after all, he did operate a vehicle at an extremely high and unsafe speed, had a blood alcohol level twice the state’s legal limit and killed his passenger. Not to mention Dunn’s last tweet was a picture of him and his friends
drinking.

The fact that so many people were surprised by his death is absolutely stunning given his line of work.

It’s like a headline straight out of The Onion: “Americans Stunned By Violent Death Of Man Who Frequently Engaged In Life-Threatening Stunts.”

While I’m all for a little bit of schadenfreude, especially when the person is legitimately deserving of misfortune, there is a time and place for that and comments like Ebert’s are best reserved for a time when the wounds aren’t so fresh.

What we can take away from this unfortunate incident is that we should all try to exercise a little more empathy in our daily lives, whether it’s posting comments on a message board or in our interactions in real life.

It’s an important reminder to stop and think before posting anything. Consider how you might react to people ripping a close friend of yours to shreds mere hours after they passed away. Words have heft and weight that can wound like any martial weapon.­