Shoot, I guess I’m going to have to write about Steve McNair one more time, because Kleinheider keeps writing about him. Here’s the thing, as far as I’m concerned. People do stupid shit. It was stupid of McNair to mess around with a twenty-year old girl. It was stupid of Jenny Kazemi to believe that a married father of four who was almost twice her age was actually going to leave his wife for her.
But such stupidity shouldn’t end in death. No one deserves to die because they’re stupid.
It also seems to me that some folks want to see people publicly denounce McNair because he was immoral and drawing a line between him and Sanford or him and Goforth.
But this is ridiculous. Steve McNair was just a public figure. He was just some guy who you knew who he was. He wasn’t in a position to make public policy based on his belief that his moral foundation gave him the right to deny some people in love basic human rights, like Sanford (for whom being exposed as a cheater should cause him to never speak against anyone in love again). He wasn’t really in a position to make people who didn’t agree with what he was doing feel unsafe or unwelcome having their jobs, as with Goforth.
He was just a guy royally fucking up.
And here’s the thing. Most grownups know that. Sure, there may be a lot of immature jackasses out there who think that McNair was living the dream–with a loyal wife and kids at home and a hot young girlfriend to play with in town–but the vast majority of us know he was royally fucking up, that a person at the very least owes his loved ones honesty about what he’s doing so that they can make decisions for their own lives based on the truth and should feel obligated to them to keep his vows. I don’t need his friends, who are grieving at the loss of their friend, to have to recite all the ways that a man they miss was a shitty person in order to escape criticism, to appease some public need to make sure everyone knows McNair was really a bad man.
And I think there’s something gross about demands that they do.
We can know he did shitty things and still allow the people who loved him to grieve.
Passing judgement on why or how people grieve is troubling to me, to say the least.
(Also, don’t miss GoldnI’s take.)
Filed under: About Town
I’ve heard stuff like, “Well that’s what happens when you hang out with young girls,” or “The moral of the story is don’t date Iranians” (no, seriously, I heard that one yesterday) or “She was just another crazy woman.”
Most of what I’ve heard about McNair has been how despite the fact that he was married, despite the fact that he was (no matter how down-to-earth people say he was) a person in a position of power and influence, despite the fact that he was known to be seen around town in the company of various women who were not his wife, he was a saint–and Kazemi was just a whore who brought him down.
So yes, they were both stupid, and neither of them deserved to die from stupidity. But I wish we could just stop with the whole McNair-did-no-wrong crap.
I wish we could just stop with the whole McNair-did-no-wrong crap.
Exactly. The man moved a football well down a field. He did not cure cancer or AIDS, did not walk on water.
I know for a fact that this girl who died with McNair was not the first young waitress he “dated” — like I said over at Newscoma’s, it looks to be a pattern to me: impressionable young girl + expensive gifts, etc…
And ya know, I couldn’t agree more with Kleinheider in that post. That needed to be said.
Funny, most of what I’ve heard is that the ex-boyfriend did it.
It’s irrelevant, given that we are not cops (at least I’m not).
I’ve also heard a lot of people saying they “know” McNair was seen about with such and such woman.
Really.
I will no longer be using the ACK abbreviation, it’s time to switch to hACK after the last couple of grandstanding eulogies he’s done. I mean, are times really that bad at the Post?
I don’t think anyone is saying that McNair did no wrong. I just don’t see why every celebrity death has to be accompanied by a whole tut-tutting moralizing session.
If more people would read fiction, there would be less need to get caught up in the details of celebrities’ lives. I know we all need a good story to get involved in, but I get a little creeped out by the attention that gets paid to the stories of strangers. Who are real people and not on this earth for our narrative pleasure.
Wow nm, I never thought of it like that. Celebrity gossip is fiction for the people who don’t read fiction. Good call.
I also maintain that fantasy football is dungeons and dragons for the guys that made fun of geeks who played dungeons and dragons in high school.
Humans tell stories. It’s one of the things we do that no one else does, I think.
About fantasy football I don’t know.
Of course he did wrong. He also did a lot right. Are we going to let the wrong get in the way of his legend as a football star? I know I won’t. There’s a story at http://www.newsy.com/videos/mcnair_superstar_or_adulterer that asks that question, and I think the consensus is that he will largely be remembered for his success and charity.
I just don’t see why every celebrity death has to be accompanied by a whole tut-tutting moralizing session.
The moral indignation could be applied in spades to a guy like Robert McNamara – a guy who might have been faithful to his wife for all that I know, but whose faulty decisions wound up getting tens of thousands of our military personnel killed and God knows how many Vietnamese, Laotians, and Cambodians…
…but he wasn’t a Democrat, nor was he famous for making music or playing football, nor was he dot dot dot.
I wish we could just stop with the whole McNair-did-no-wrong crap.
Exactly. The man moved a football well down a field. He did not cure cancer or AIDS, did not walk on water.
I have stewed over a blog post on this since the weekend, but I am, for once, holding my tongue. Er, fingers.
I will say, though, that calling him a “fallen hero” as two local stations have repeatedly done is about to make me scream. No, gentlemen, try looking up “Jerry Anderson” if you want to call someone in the NFL a “fallen hero.” Or maybe “Pat Tillman.”
“No one deserves to die because they’re stupid.”
You’d better recheck the stats, Aunt B: stupidity is the crime for which the death penalty is most often imposed — usually by Nature, a roommate with no sense of humor, or some law of physics. Death or serious bodily injury is often the immediate response to a first offense of terminal stupidity. See any edition of the Darwin Awards.
Did these particular people deserve to die? No. Was death a foreseeable outcome of what you describe as stupidity? A much closer question.
Isn’t it odd how one of the most powerful motivating factors to live “right” is self-preservation?
Yep. Darwin Awards. QED.
Now, I don’t know about the “deserve” part, necessarily. Not my call. But it is certainly foreseeable in a lot of cases.
Oh come on, the gap between “dies because stupid” and “deserves to die because stupid” is so large I’m almost insulted you want to try to pass them off as the same thing.
But it’s cute that y’all ascribe motive to death, as it if wanders around looking for idiots to take out. Sometimes I feel like I’m the only pagan around these parts and then y’all say stuff like that.
I don’t know if it’s pagan or not …I’m just saying that when you do something dumb, you gotta know you’re taking a risk.
Oops. Maybe you’re right about the idea being pagan. According to Urban Dictionary.com, an old Gene Pitney song, and a 1965 Tony Perkins movie, the Fool Killer is “A mythical giant that wanders the Earth killing fools with his club.”
Per Wikipedia, in the forestry industry, a fool killer is a loose object in a tree-top which “poses a risk to equipment or personnel working under or around the tree. The object can become dislodged by wind, or in the process of tree felling. Responsible for 11% of all fatal chainsaw accidents.”
The point I was trying to make (perhaps badly) is that when you fool around with dangerous things or dangerous people or dangerous behavior, you may not deserve to die … but on the other hand, you may be asking for it.
when you fool around with dangerous things or dangerous people or dangerous behavior, you may not deserve to die … but on the other hand, you may be asking for it.
We’re not talking about a pair of people who juggled chainsaws for a living here.
Per annum, the number of affairs that end in murder-suicide* is statistically insignificant compared to the number of affairs that happen.
* going with the most likely scenario, per Occam.
Which has been dangerous to more people in history — a juggled chainsaw, or raw human emotion? In my experience, wild animals, bad weather, and guns in bars can’t compare as “dangerous” with the rage of someone who feels betrayed. Don’t most grownups know that?
“I know I said I’d marry you; I know you told your family and all your friends; I know you sold all your stuff on Craig’slist, but I’m not leaving my wife.” BLAM.
I don’t know that it happened that way. Likely enough, no one on earth will ever know. But no one would be surprised if that kind of cause led to that kind of effect.
I’ll stick with juggling nice, safe chainsaws, while saying to the wife “Yes, honey” and “Right away, dear.”
Hell hath not fury like a chainsaw scorned?
Didn’t think so.