OK, now my brain hurts.

Steve Irwin, the ebullient "Crocodile Hunter," founded the Steve Irwin Conservation Foundation to help protect habitats and wildlife. He created rescue programs for some of Australia's most beloved creatures, and led efforts to rescue some less beloved. He helped found International Crocodile Rescue. He established the Lyn Irwin Memorial Fund, where all donations go directly to the Iron Bark Station Wildlife Rehabilitation Center with 3,450 acres of wildlife sanctuary. He also owned 83,000 acres of endangered Acacia Woodland in southwestern Queensland and started the Brigalow Belt Conservation Project. He bought up enormous portions of Australia for the sole purpose of conserving habitats for wildlife. He started endangered species breeding programs for ten kinds of reptiles, birds and mammals. He has also established breeding programs for at least eighteeen vulnerable species. Steve helped fund field studies for scores of species of crocodilians, lizards, snakes, mammals, and birds in order to help stave off their habitat destruction and learn exactly what it is those species need to survive. He is responsible for the rescue and well-being of thousands upon thousands of animals from all around Australia. And through his effort to educate and entertain, he has single-handedly raised conservation awareness across the globe.

However, in an article on their website titled "Steve Irwin: Not a True 'Wildlife Warrior,'" PETA takes aim at Irwin, saying:

Self-professed wildlife warriors make their livings by harassing and mishandling animals who are minding their own business in their natural environments. Animals' homes are invaded, their nests and dens are disrupted, and they are dragged by their tails, netted, roped, and forced to endure physical invasion of their personal space as the exhibitors jump on them and wrestle them to the ground....

These celebrities' work becomes more about showboating egos and titillating audiences at the expense of animals than about education. Does the public really need to see someone dragging a frightened snake out of a hole and flailing the animal around on a stick in order to realize how important and morally imperative it is to respect and protect that animal?

OK. I guess that's one way to look at it.

But at the same time they bash a man who, as far as I know, never said an unkind word about anyone, they gush over "compassionate Cowell" ! Yup, Simon Cowell, the "American Idol" host who's probably reduced more people to tears than all of my ex-husbands combined. Cowell teamed with PETA for a TV public service announcement reminding people not to park their pups in sweltering cars.

"Far be it from me to be critical, but I find it really appalling that this year, thousands of dogs will die of heatstroke inside parked cars," says Cowell.

Don't understand who or what is served by overlooking all the good Steve Irwin did just to slam him on the occasion of his death.

And to laud Simon Cowell for the ability to make a complicated moral distinction like "Maybe some people are surprised that I like animals, but there's a bit of a difference between telling someone who's a useless singer, 'You're a useless singer,' (and) drowning a puppy...."

Guess I'm just difficult to impress.

My "where were you when the planes hit" story is even less interesting than most ... I checked the wire either just before the talk portion of my show or just after I got off the air -- I can't even remember now. There was a one-liner from the AP about a plane hitting the World Trade Center. I think everyone at that time thought it was a small plane with "some idiot" or something behind the controls.

Guess we were wrong.

I don't think, even five years later, that we've begun to grasp what the events of 9/11 mean. I think they were too big for us to grasp five years ago and they perhaps still are. Plus I think they mutate over time, the way anything will after you've learned more about it, not to mention chewed on it over and over again. I also think that for those of us here in the Midwest, perhaps, in particular, we will never fully understand what those attacks meant to the people who live in New York.

So it's perhaps a measure of my tunnel vision ... my depression ... or an inability to see past the end of my nose that for five years, every time there's an interview with or about the 9/11 widows, all I can think is I lost a marriage, too -- and no one gave a damn.

I had a conversation with a friend once, a widower, who agreed that, although losing a beloved partner to death is awful, at least you know you were loved. For five years I've listened to and read about these women recalling the wonderful love of their husbands, and I think, "You had that and I'm supposed to feel sorry for you?!"

My husband's gone, too. But he quit loving me and then he split. He decided drugs were more important and I didn't have any more choice in the matter than the 9/11 widows. I'm raising a child alone, too. But nobody's writing articles about me, or sending me money, or offering me speaking engagements or feeling sorry for me -- in fact, if anything, the assumption is I'm somehow to blame. You don't get a life insurance payout when your spouse relapses, either. The same government that didn't forsee someone using a jetliner as a WMD can't win its "war on drugs" either. And the same government (loosely defined, of course) that will bend over backwards now for 9/11 victims can't even be bothered to enforce a child support order half the time. The father of my daughter is still around, making trouble for me, breaking his daughter's heart, poking at old wounds ... and yet it's the widows that garner all the sympathy? They were loved! People are looking out to make sure they're kids are taken care of! If your heart is going to be broken regardless ... they've got it made!

And now the 9/11 widows are remarrying. One gal was quotes as saying "She wasn't meant to be alone." I'm glad God came through for her, but what about the rest of us? Are we meant to be alone? What did we do to rate that?

OK, granted ... it's been a rough seven years ... the state still hasn't posted the check that I thought was coming last week and as a result I'm a little Effexor-deprived ... so the next post will take a more critical look at this line of thought (and I can hear my therapist applauding from here ...)

Perhaps it's just a coping mechanism. Take a tiny piece of the whole enormous experience ... get honked off about it -- voila! Instant coping mechanism!

Or maybe I am the solipsistic, emotionally stunted person I suspect I am ...

Experts ponder public grief over Irwin
Anna Salleh
ABC Science Online
Friday, 8 September 2006

This week's mass grieving in response to the death of Australian crocodile hunter Steve Irwin is part of a fairly recent phenomenon dependent on the mass media, say experts.

But how do we make sense of this public grieving for the loss of someone most have never met?

We generally think of grief as being associated with the loss of people we're very close to, like a family member, says psychologist Grant Brecht, of the Australian Psychological Society.

But he says we can feel close to someone we have never met if we come to know and like them through their appearances in the media.

"We conjure up in our own mind feelings and thoughts about what that person would be like," says Brecht.

And when they die we respond as if we did in fact know them.

"We can experience grief almost at the same level as we may well do with a family member," says Brecht.

"People would have felt an affinity with Steve," he says. "He was a bit of an Australian icon, a bit of an Australian larrikin, someone who seemed to have quite an affinity with animals, which most of us would respect."

Brecht says the mourning is a healthy part of dealing with the feeling of loss.

While most of us will remember the spontaneous outpourings exhibited after the death of Princess Diana, grieving hasn't always been such a public affair.

A recent phenomenon

Australian National University historian Professor Pat Jalland says mass public grieving has really only taken off since the 1970s.

"Had the equivalent of Princess Diana died 40 years earlier I can guarantee it would not have resulted in anything like what happened," she says.

Jalland says the last period in history when grieving was an accepted activity was during the 19th century, before the advent of mass media.

At this time death claimed many infant lives and grieving occurred through religious rituals.

But between 1918 and the 1970s public grieving was suppressed, says Jalland.

In part this was helped by a decline in infant mortality, which meant death mainly happened in old age and behind closed doors at home and, eventually, in hospital.

Silence about death

The suppression of grief was also helped by a decline in religious ritual and by a period of major wars in which soldiers, and by implication all of us, were expected to bear death with stoicism, says Jalland.

"The two world wars created a massive overload of death and sorrow which induced what Freud and others call death denial - a silence about death," she says."The emotional responses were suppressed."

At this time media coverage of sudden and tragic deaths were very factual and lacked the personal stories that are common today, says Jalland.

But she says all that changed in the 1970s when there was a huge cultural shift towards more open displays of emotion.

This shift was encouraged by the women's and gay liberation movements, says Jalland, and by psychologists like Elisabeth Kubler-Ross who encouraged open discussion about death and dying.

And it was encouraged by the mass media, which showed grief as a normal response to tragedy by reporting the personal stories of those involved.

Secular spirituality

Dr David Ritchie of Deakin University, who has a special interest in grief education, says the good side of mass media facilitated grief is that it gives people permission to grieve.

He says this is important in a society where people seldom die at home, there are few rituals around death and people's main experience of death is through the media.

"The idea of death as part of the life cycle is really foreign," says Ritchie, who is also on the management committee of the Australian Centre for Grief and Bereavement.

Ritchie says spontaneous outpourings of grief in the company of strangers helps people make sense of the shocking nature of sudden death.

Making shrines out of flowers, photos, artwork and poetry, lighting candles and sharing stories about the person who has died all helps to make people feel connected and empowered, says Ritchie. "It's part of a secular spirituality".

But Ritchie doesn't see mass public grieving as anything like the grief of a close family member.

"We can always see Steve Irwin by looking at the films," he says. "We can always press the rewind button or put the tape back in again because that's how we knew him."

It will be very different for his family, says Ritchie.

And he says each person experiences grief differently and the "one size fits all" version sanctioned by the mass media could lead to inauthentic experiences of grief.

http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/2006/1736016.htm?health