Thursday, October 30th 2008

By Peter Goffin

     It’s funny how tragic events always make you take stock of who you are as a person. Maybe that’s because when things get serious, and you’re forced to take action, you show your true character or revert to your basest self. Nothing can get you closer to answering the question “What are my priorities?” like a crisis. In the days after Brandon Hall caught fire, for instance, as four students were being sent to hospital, and hundreds more were being displaced, we here in  CONTACT _Con-3EA44C391 \c \s \l the Silhouette’s production office were giddy. 

     That may be cruel, but it was giddiness with due cause. We didn’t wish any particular harm on Brandon, and we weren’t glad it got smoked out, per se, but our lives got a whole lot easier when it did.

     See, when Brandon was set aflame, the news department got a really important story to report. Our reporters got to interview with fire marshals and quote Peter George. Our photographers took literally hundreds of photos. And not only was there a story to report, but it was a hallmark sort of story; the kind that people never forget about. Fires are big-time news. 

     Here on the opinions page the fire combined with a proposed hike in student fees to make a juggernaut of a muse that continues to inspire articles a week and a half later. Nothing gets people volunteering their thoughts and feelings like poverty and fires. Coming up with material has never been easier. Everyone’s spirits were lifted around here. It was “Goodbye slow news week, hello productivity, hello iconic story, hello relevance.” 

     And that’s when I realized that we as reporters, photographers, writers, editors feed off the misfortune of others. Not in a malicious way, but in a parasitic, circle of life, sort of way. We need tragedy to survive. It gives us a purpose. Without the grand disasters, what would news report? If everybody got along, and nobody had any complaints, what would I write about? You see we thrive on the continuance of suffering, pestilence, inequality. If the world ever got cleaned up, we’d be in the shit-house – totally unemployable. 

     People would stop reading the news after it’s fourth week of reporting that everyone and everything continues to generally be nice. Nobody is going to read opinions articles about how satisfied I am with the way things are going. Even Andy would get boring without the occasional disastrous movie or album to pan.

     We’d never admit it, and I didn’t really realize it myself until the Brandon fire, but down in some ugly corner of ourselves, editors and writers might just be thinking bad thoughts, hoping for general unpleasantness. We may be lighting candles in prayer for fires and floods and raised fees. Maybe that makes us ghouls, I don’t know. Maybe this Friday you should scrap the vampire costume and be a real bloodsucker; dress as a newspaper writer for Halloween. 

     I wouldn’t say it necessarily makes us bad people. We’re not poking dolls with pins – yet. We haven’t resorted to creating inclement current events for our own sinister benefit, like the villain from Tomorrow Never Dies. We just happen to benefit in a direct way from the failures, struggles and misfortunes of the general public. But that in itself makes me a little uncomfortable for a few reasons, not the least of which being that bad things could stop happening at any time. World peace cold break out, the Messiah could return during the night, people could stop lighting buildings on fire – anything is possible. And if that ever happens, our staff will be carpooling to the back of the U.I. line to collect our subsidy cheques the very next day.