Recently Pittsburgh Steelers running back Rashard Mendenhall tweeted:
"What kind of person celebrates death? It's amazing how people can HATE a man they have never even heard speak. We've only heard one side ... "(117)
In response to the news of Osama Bin Laden's death. This drew the collective ire of just about everyone, including his Apparel sponsor.
Before I go further, let me immunize myself from the same hateful remarks, by saying I do not agree with Mendenhall's statement; I am merely analyzing it.
Sara Ahmed says in Affective Economies:
"In such affective economies, emotions do things, and they align individuals with communities—or bodily space with social space — through the very intensity of their attachments"
What Mendenhall said was not that inflammatory, if in a vacuum - he is merely asking a question- but the timing of his comments seemed to interact with the "rippling effect of emotions" (Ahmed-120). The intensity of the attachment was refreshed following Bin Laden's death, and it seems that the cathartic aspect of his death re-opened the scab wound. It's as if Osama's death awoke the 9/11 patriotic anger towards the other.
If Mendenhall had made his comments at a later time would he have received the same vitriol? Obviously that is an unknowable, but for arguments sake; I say no. I think that affective economy that is Bin Laden's death (and all that it evokes) has "aligned individuals" and Mendenhall's comments flew in the face of this alignment.
Or maybe I am reading too much into it, and Mendenhall is just an A-hole...
It's a difficult thing to say because in people's minds the other side is... well, 9/11. Think of the implications that the action has on what the people who committed it are and it's not difficult to imagine what the other side is. Also, there are plenty of Osama bin Laden videos with him talking floating around... I do think that our impression of Osama was very much a cardboard cutout that disregards most of the background and reasoning behind the man, but that is not to say the general impression is not accurate.
ReplyDeleteSo basically, I'd say that Mendenhall may or may not be an A-Hole, but he is definitely short sighted.
Shortsighted for sure, and I agree that with your notion of a cardboard Osama(I imagine it, at a gun range, with a bulls-eye on his forehead). But I find it fascinating that there are conspiracy theorists out there who have said the same thing, and for years, but without receiving the backlash that Mendenhall has received. Maybe his status as football player has magnified the response, but I really think it was his (poor) timing which elicited this level of response.
ReplyDeleteI'd say it was both. People could claim that Obama was dead and we should feel _____ before because, well, to be honest people didn't care what they said. They were generally on the outliers of society, and had nowhere near the level of cultural weight that Mendenhall had. The timing was definitely important, as it was the moment that all of the pent up anger and desire for revenge was vindicated - a moment of pleasure, so to speak, for those who felt that the very existence of Osama bin Laden as a living human being was an insult. He ended up walking in front of a tidal wave of emotion with an umbrella, and got swept away because of it.
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