Today I saw a documentary on the life and death of Anna Nicole Smith. Remember the spunky Playboy girl whose life fell apart after the death of her son? Funny how things go, from that whole documentary what impressed on me the most was someone's casual commentary at the end that Anna Nicole's life reads like a morality story. Does it really? In the context of her personal tragedy, this remark sounded just awful. I could hear some preacher say how being so sexually overt or "slutty" was the reason of her downfall. It just made me remember of those supposedly bygone times when women were stoned to death for being sexually promiscuous. We are not really all that far from those times. If you don't believe me, check out a horror movie. The most sexually active person always gets killed.
What worries me the most in all this is the easy, casual way society passes judgments on people's lives. Anna Nicole was a "slut" - she deserved to die. Is it really so simple to pass pronouncements on other people? Do we really know what goes on in other people's lives? Do we capture any of a person's essence by placing a label on him or her? Is a person simply "black" or "Mexican" or "Arab"? Is he/she simply a "doctor" or a "Harvard graduate"? I don't know. It just seems so much simpler and less time consuming to quickly "weigh" a person and not bother with subtlety.
I admit that there is no time to get to know all the people we meet. At the same time, we should perhaps recognize that this is more our fault - our choice than theirs. Consequently, we should maybe refrain from saddling people with epithets they did not deserve. Give other people a little more chance.
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