Feelings

A few Penn State students dressed up as victims of the Virginia Tech shootings at a private party. Some pictures were taken that eventually made it to the news media.

There are three issues in this situation:

1. Don't ever do anything in private that you would not want known in public.
2. It is wrong to act in any way that might offend another person's feelings.
3. Is this an issue of privacy or secrecy?

If interpreted strictly, few people would be completely comfortable with making every moment of their lives public. While the bar of public decency is to not offend, exceptions are allowed where there is a need to present another view that may not be "politically correct" but does express another viewpoint. That is the concept of freedom. People have the choice to have a cognitive and an emotional response to your message, or even to ignore it. This event of "performance art" is no different than the urine on Jesus picture or any other artistic expression that incites the emotions. The message that I got was that the Penn State students thought that the VT situation was being milked for secondary gain by many people who had nothing directly to do with the event.

The more complicated question is whether or not this was a private or secret situation. The students who staged it thought of it as a privacy issue, while the news media are playing it up as a secrecy issue. To me, it was a privacy violated rather than a secrecy exposed.

It is more telling how the news media milks all stories. Now, that would make a great parody!