|
I'm on call tonight...covering three hospitals. The pager on my belt is like an electric funny bone. When it vibrates my whole nervous system jumps. While I do like being able to help people in trouble, I really hope this thing is quiet tonight. For one thing, when it does go off it means that somebody is in serious emotional and spiritual pain. Of course there are a lot of people in this hospital who are in pain, but when the pager is quiet you can pretend to yourself that everyone is just fine. It's also about myself; when the pager is quiet, I can read and relax and sleep in peace. Selfish, I know, but there it is. I've not written much about the terrorist group arrested in Toronto. I feel like I should, partly because a lot of my readers are American (and personal friends) and I live in the city where it happened. It's not something that affects me, but I feel an obligation to give my impressions. The thing is, I don't know what to write...if these kids were actually planning to do harm, well done. If it's a group of mere thugs, the sort of oafs that North America specializes in (mostly in the 15-25 year-old male range) then it's much ado about not much. Should under-evolved cretins be locked up? Yes, but then you'd be locking up about 75 percent of the high school and college male population. There are accusations that the young men have been "tortured" by their guards...woken up every hour and made to sleep with the lights on. Wow. That describes the experience of every patient in the neuro step-down unit I work on. New parents go through more than that, for crying out loud. On the Richter Scale of torture, we're talking a 1.5. What has struck me in bold, all caps and underlined, has been the treatment that the families of the accused have received at the hands of the media. Whatever these kids were up to, their moms and dads and brothers and sisters are not under arrest. They have not been accused and are, presumably, perfectly innocent. Why, then, do we have to pile the indignity of a media frenzy on top of what is already a horrific experience? Their boys are accused of terrorist plotting, of plans to kill a whole lot of people. It must be an awful thing to live with, whether the family thinks the kids are innocent or (worse) guilty. Yet whenever they go to court, to see their loved ones and to stand with them in a frightening and difficult process (like any good family does) they are harrassed and harried and shoved and crowded...they're treated like criminals themselves. What the media will do for a story is beyond disgusting. What gets done with the story once it reaches the news desk is almost as disgusting. You know what I mean...splash graphics ("Terror in Toronto!") and sensational teaser lines ("Chaos narrowly averted! Death aimed at Toronto's heart! News at eleven!") turn a serious and sobering subject into a carnival. A sick, twisted carnival. It's just not decent. |
