Just turned off Keith Olbermann

[question everything]

and did the same earlier with the national news and CNN. I do not want to watch any photos of Hussein's hanging, not under the guise of the "proliferation of cell phone."

Can't they at least issue an alert? They do this with so many other stories "this may be too graphic," or something.

I stayed off any commercial TV during the weekend and I knew that covering the Ford funeral was safe.

I guess I should stay off for the rest of the week, unless they will think of another angle.

[cyberpj]

1. You missed another great special comment on "more troops" to Iraq. nt

[Sydnie]

2. Well, you should turn it back on now

He's slicing blivet** up one side and down the other on the "surge" plans! Special Comment tonight is fantastic!

[beachmom]

3. Thanks for that info. I'm taping it, but know to fast forward while

shutting my eyes until it reaches the Special Comment. I also am sensitive to seeing something so gruesome.

[AzDar]

4. I did, too! Jesus Christ, those folks who had such a problem

with Janet Jackson's nipple apparently are just fine with showing a man in his death throes.
I have a 10 and 3-year old, and they were in the room; I've had to turn the teevee off many times in the past few days.
That appalling footage is seemingly EVERYWHERE.
It SICKENS me..

[TomInTib]

5. Turn it back on, they are just showing clips of people shooting people

Do you have a problem with depictions of violence in general, or just hangings?

I am not being facetious, q e, I am truly curious.

[question everything]

11. Any death penalty: hanging, electric chair

even injection.

And, yes, people torn to pieces by high velocity bullets or simple suicide bombing. At least, I would like to be alerted that something is coming.

I can't help it. Such images are then embedded in my brain and I physically feel as if I am the one who is being torn apart. I am probably one of the few DUers who did not watch any tape of the beheadings.

At least, if I read about such actions I can take it on my own time. And, of course, reading something the imagination can worse than actual images.

[TomInTib]

16. Thanks for the reply, question everything

I see a lot of responses like yours here and I was wondering what drove them.

But I knew that I could ask you and get a non-hysterical reply. Thank you so much.

I suppose that I have been around so much violent death that I have become somewhat immune to the actual loss of life. I tend to grieve for the survivors.
Gee, I hope that doesn't sound too callous.
I think that you know what I mean.

[question everything]

21. Thank you! It is a sad commentary that too many of us have

become desensitized about violence, and brutality and simple acts of meanness.

Here is one story that I forced myself to read some five years ago, about photographing lynching in this country. I really felt sick but felt compelled to know this aspect of history.

Watching or reading Hussein twitches, or not, does not make a difference in my life. He was a brutal dictator, he was executed, end of story.

http://www.ocweekly.com/culture/books/twisted-system/22897/

In April 1899, white residents of Newman, Georgia, gathered for that festival of Southern virtues, the lynching. "The event assumed a familiar format," writes historian Leon Litwack. "As in most lynchings, the guilt of the victim had not been proven in a court of law. As in most lynchings, no member of the crowd wore a mask, nor did anyone attempt to conceal the names of the perpetrators; indeed, newspaper reporters noted the active participation of some of the region’s most prominent citizens."

At their center was Sam Hose, an African-American. "After stripping Hose of his clothes and chaining him to a tree," Litwack writes, the crowd "stacked kerosene-soaked wood around him. Before saturating Hose with oil and applying the torch, they cut off his ears, fingers and genitals and skinned his face." Then they burned him alive. But the scene doesn’t end there. "Before Hose’s body had even cooled, his heart and liver were removed and cut into several pieces, and his bones were crushed into small particles. The crowd fought over these souvenirs." One proud citizen took a slice of heart to present to the governor. Hose’s severed knucklebones were prominently displayed in the front window of an Atlanta grocer.

Lynching Photography in America by James Allen, et al.; Twin Palms Publishers. 209 pages, hardcover, $60.

[dave_p]

17. Me too

I'm not squeamish, but I think showing death and suffering this way is invasive for both me and the victim. News is infotainment, like it or not. And killing and dying aren't fun.

To me it's about privacy. Having your last terrible moments as you know you're dying splashed around the world is just obscene, whether it's by lynching, beheading or leaping in terror from a burning building.

When I go, if I get to make the choice I may choose to have someone present if I think they'd suffer more by not being there. But I don't want to be an entertainment for millions.

And while I'd hope to be there too for someone who needed me, I don't want to be a voyeur to anyone else's death: it's demeaning to both, and I don't need that in my head.

[Annces]

6. I won't look at any pictures of the hanging either

They could have prevented cell phones from being there. It is debased to show those pictures.

[dflprincess]

7. Catch the rerun

he was on fire tonight with his special comment.

[flyarm]

8. well you missed hsi best special comment ever!!!

this must stop sir, and it must stop now!!

incredible!!!!!!!!!!!!

fly

[Peggy Day]

10. True-he was great.

[question everything]

12. Will watch it on youtube

you know it will be there.

[kstewart33]

9. No, watch the execution.

I did. And you will most likely wonder, as I did: why are our own dying for these people?

What animals. By our own standards of decency, even a Satan like Saddam should be accorded a solemn, dignified execution. We cannot allow ourselves to be like him.

But they were animals. Not a shred of decency among them. And Saddam looked like a well-dressed martyr.

Another measure of madness that's become Iraq.

[question everything]

13. It was probably more dignified than their earlier history

In 1958 they had a military coup that deposed the monarch. He and his prime minister were then beheaded and their heads were marched in the streets and shown on local TV.

Thankfully, we did not have satellites and the Internet to transmit these images across the globe and, apparently, no archival footage (please, let them not be!)

[Ahpook]

14. I don't push things on anyone...

but a neighbor of mine that is/was gung ho for all this fucking mess, just may have changed his mind seeing it. He came over after watching on some website, and we turned back a couple of Killian's.

I suppose it showed the stupid bastard what death is and what it looks like. He is only 24 and well off with family inheritance. I suppose he may be a bit sheltered?

In any event, he is not so damn blood thirsty after witnessing this assassination. I could hear the new found compassion in his voice. Maybe this whole fucking thing will go in the opposite direction that the thugs in DC had hoped?

But, this has nothing to do with you:) Just something i witnessed, and wanted to post. Seeing someone morph in to a compassionate person is nice. I didn't have to say a word, just listen.:)

[Blue_In_AK]

15. You should have stuck around for the special comment...

It was the best one yet, IMO.

[and-justice-for-all]

18. Saddam requested to be hanged...

..The other option I think was a firing squad.

MSM will not show us all the brutality that is REALLY going on in the middle east, but we can see a hanging??? WTF.

So, if Saddam was chraged with War Crimes, around 100 of them, then hung, what do you think Bush will get?? He is a War Criminal, and as far I am concerned, no different then the man we just hanged.

[MonkeyFunk]

19. actually

I believe he requested a firing squad, and was refused.

Firing Squads are considered more "manly". Hanging is for common criminals.

[and-justice-for-all]

20. My bad...I guess I had it backwards...nt