by TeaPartyCat
There’s a long history of calling suicides an act of cowardice, and Fox News anchor Shep Smith added to it yesterday when reporting on Robin Williams:
It’s hard to imagine, isn’t it? You could love three little things so much, watch them grow, they’re in their mid-20s, and they’re inspiring you, and exciting you, and they fill you up with the kind of joy you could never have known.
And yet, something inside you is so horrible or you’re such a coward or whatever the reason that you decide that you have to end it. Robin Williams, at 63, did that today.But can you really call someone a coward who suffered from depression? Where does courage and bravery play in depression?
To call someone a coward means having to ignore their on-going depression, prior addictions which may aggravate it, and much more. To judge the actions of someone else without all the facts and call them a coward? That just seems wrong.
Smith has since apologized, saying in part:
I would never presume to know anything about his private life. And if any of his family members and friends were to have seen me use the word “coward,” I would be horrified. I would just to apologize to the end of the earth to anyone who might think that I meant to openly call him a coward.
To the core of my being, I regret it. It just came out of my mouth. And I’m so sorry. And to anyone and their families who see that, I am sorry.
Now, I don’t doubt his sincerity. And he says that he may have hastily used the word coward. Perhaps he reached to that word because culturally there’s a long history of calling suicide victims cowards and it just came out. But his apology was crafted and not spur of the moment, and there’s still a part missing. He’s very clear to apologize to anyone from Williams’ family who might have seen or heard that he said it. That’s nice, but that’s not really what I find offensive. Public figures will have people say things about them and judge them; Williams was a public figure for 30+ years and made tons of money and so people will say things.
Instead what I find missing is any apology for the idea that suicide is a cowardly act by those suffering depression. It’s insensitive to all the depressed people who entertain these thoughts. It’s insensitive to all the families of people who have lost someone with depression to suicide. Before depression was studied and understood better, not getting that connection was understandable. But it’s 2014. You can’t go around calling people suffering from depression “cowards” any more. And that is why Shepard Smith is the Asshole of the Day.
It is Shepard Smith’s first time as Asshole of the Day, but one of a long, long line of Fox News assholes.
Full story: MediaiteStephanie Doty
Weary of Wonderland
August 13, 2014
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
