Tag: ruth bader ginsburg

After a very small hiatus from writing sparked by mostly reasonable or otherwise deemed untouchable comments, I found a comment this morning that made me sit down and write.

Yesterday, Fox News host was made to apologize for an error on the part of Fox News: the network shared a graphic that suggested that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had died. (See above.) South Carolina’s The State reported the story yesterday morning after the apology had been issued. They included the following apologies:

“We need to apologize,” host Steve Doocy said, The Washington Examiner reported. “That was a mistake, that was an accident. We believe she is still at home recovering from surgery.”

“This was a technical error that emanated from the graphics team.” a Fox News spokesperson wrote in an email.

https://www.thestate.com/news/nation-world/national/article224855785.html?fbclid=IwAR3vI-EouPQq-Y5CtZcyRw5KBgCM7VwCVkiI24-Q9H8q9lbP8QPV9tlTMwU

After all the apologies, the issue was handled for me. Sure, I rolled my eyes that somehow it was a “technical error” and I scoffed at the “we believe she’s okay” statement, but otherwise it was handled in my eyes. Until I went to the comments where this articles commenter showed their belly. Oy.

So here I am, enjoying a perfectly normal morning. I felt like there should be more angry reacts to the comment than there were. I like to think of these as learning moments, so I decided to take a moment to discuss the title: when IS it okay to joke about someone’s death? The answer is: probably never. Probably is the word I want to fix on.

To talk about myself for a little bit, my sense of humor is dry and macabre. I often joke about my own death. My therapist says I’m really good at radical acceptance, which is nice because otherwise my therapist has a long list of things I could work on. To me, death is just something that is inevitable and totally normal and not something I fear because no matter what other plans I make that is the only thing I can guarantee is going to come my own way. The thing is, I only joke about my own death. Not my friends or loved ones, hell, not even political figures. See, it’s totally normal to talk about the death of someone, but to joke about it casts a gross light on the person making a joke.

Martin Luther King JR was murdered 50 years ago. Just because it’s out of reach for many viewers on social media threads doesn’t mean it’s okay to joke about. Justice Ginsburg is still alive, it’s not okay to joke about her death, especially as she recovers from lung cancer. So unless you’re talking about your own death, stay away from snarky jokes about the deaths of others.