"Since When Are Public Figures Fair Game For Satire?"

I have been meaning to post on this topic for quite a while now, ever since I read this post (linked in title above) about Sen. Rick Santorum bringing home a dead fetus, which, hopefully, the Senator had the decorum to not name "Bernie", to cuddle with the rest of his family. Reaction to the post ranged from disbelief that someone would bring a dead fetus home, to outrage that the author of the post would make light of such a tragic event, to an overall generally creepy feeling (shudder). I would like to link you to these comments, as well, but I have a mac, so I am not offered a link button. I suppose I could change browsers and see if that helped, or even learn the code to put links in manually, but I am not sufficently irritated by the situation yet...so you'll have to do some digging if you want to find the comments. Anyway...

Yes, I suppose it is uncompassionate to make light of a situation like the Senators, but isn't it kind of creepy to cuddle with a dead fetus? Well, isn't it? What would we be thinking if his wife died and he brought her corpse home too? I think that it's not the showing the fetus to his/her/its potential siblings that was so weird, it was the bring home and cuddling and, oh yeah, making it public that was creepy.

I'm not one to pass judgement on the proper way to grieve...oh, what the hell, it's so easy, so why shouldn't I? As a person in the limelight (what the hell is limelight? Sounds like a blight that befalls citrus fruits), people notice when you act weird. And when you take a tragedy and try to turn it into a political statement...which is what the whole thing looks like to me, like a "Fuck you, liberals, look how sad I am, how can you say to a man in such grief that this isn't a human baby, how could you say it's ok to kill my baby?!?" I'm sure there was very genuine grief that he felt, but, as a politician, he knows an opening when he sees one. Why else make it so tastelessly public?

Maybe, as South Park rules state, it's not funny yet because it happened ten years ago, and needs another ten years to mature to jesting freshness. The humor in the Senators actions is really no different than the humor in South Park's "The John Denver Experience" ride, which was hilarious! When inappropriateness reaches a certain level of ridiculousness, tragedy become tramedy (comedic tragedy). Sorry, that's just the way it is.

So I suppose there is a downside to wealth, fame and seemingly limitless power. Those poor, poor obscenely rich people...who will look out for them? When's gonna be their time?!?