Reply #26: Dealing With Death

[KharmaTrain]

Seems some here can't separate the grieving with the media circus around it. Or maybe it's that some here have never been exposed to a sudden death and the hole it creates in the people who are directly affected. The bubbleworld that is NBC News is a small one...it's rareified air. The people who get gigs there work their way up to the "bigs" and then are put in a fishbowl that cranks out "product" 24/7. Rachel is now part of this meatgrinder. She's had a personal and virtual bond to all the people she works with...right, left, up and down...in a knetic world that now demands these people spend endless hours with one another. It's almost like being in a combat zone. Russert, being one of the bosses, and, I'm sure a genuniely nice guy, was a big presence in this world...a world that she now lives in as well...and how can a human being not be affected by such a sudden loss.

That said...there's also the way this death is being dealt with that deserves criticism that some claim to be "callous" or "grave dancing". The public display of grief of a personality in this bubbleworld far outweighs the mission of what a news channel is supposed to be. It's gone from covering the world around it to wallowing in its own little fishbowl...and expecting the rest of us to feel the loss of some tribal elder. The grief that usually plays out privately has taken on a public synergy...or a manufactured one. If calling this excessive coverage as "grave dancing"...then so be it.