AC - love that phrase. "Recreational grief". Are you its author, or have you half-inched it from someone? Yes, I know what you are abhorring, and I agree with you. It's all part of the fad for the public examination of the entrails of every everyday occurrence, whether it's someone who's been maimed in an accident, someone whose kid's died from an obscure disease, someone who's had their leg bitten off by a shark, etc. Or someone who was talented, rich, self-indulgent, and now dead. We're supposed to be deeply caring about the dross which washes up on the dingy shores of shows like 'Trisha', whinging about how their Mum's had it off with their last three boyfriends, and equally deeply caring about the starving of Niger (when did we start poncing around calling it 'Nee-jair' instead of 'Nye-jer', for God's sake?) in the same half hour. No wonder some kids have their perspectives all skewed. (Or even adults.) We can live vicariously and sentimentally through anyone else's life but our own, it seems.
