NEW YEAR, OLD MISANTHROPY


one more reason why I hate people.

My optimism for the new year and my resolution to think more positively about my fellow men (and women) lasted about eight-and-a-half hours, until I woke and read the paper and perused a few online news sites and saw, much to my disgust, two different photographs of two different white, western couples lounging and sunning themselves on the beaches of Thailand.

In one photo, a vacationing couple sits upright on beach blankets in the foreground, while in the background, a forlorn native man walks along the shoreline, his head bowed to his chest. In the other, a swimsuit-clad couple relaxes on wooden lounge chairs, shaded by a colorful beach umbrella, while behind them, workers pile debris and twisted wreckage from the tsunami into a huge, grotesque pile of wood and metal and canvas; the man has turned slightly to watch the work, while the woman, reclining not twenty feet from the destruction, seems utterly untroubled by the activity.

How nice that both couples could soldier-on with their vacations and not let a little local trouble like 4,600 deaths and 6,500 still-missing persons -- much less the other 136,000 deaths in the region -- diminish their obviously stalwart focus on themselves and their sunbathing.

Posted: Sat - January 1, 2005 at 02:00 PM          

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