STUPID HEADLINES

`````The headline was in a well known, leading paper, yet it was vulgar and offensive and was the sort of thing that one would expect in a tabloid. It began with some tag line having to do with "Obese Teen Dies in Fire..." It went on to relate how she was too heavy for the fire personnel to rescue her. I started checking other papers and the song, as they say, remained the same.

`````Her name was Jamaya Herron and she was eighteen years old. Evidentally, she loved to attend the church where her father was the Baptist preacher. Those who knew her said that she was a very nice, girl, with some health problems. There was a photo of her in the paper and she had a beautiful face with glowing skin. When I looked at the picture, I could see that her eyes radiated warmth. I won't say what her weight was, as there's enough focus on that.

`````I wrote the other day about how so many comments have become hateful; well, I rest my case. People are spiteful, making references to Darwinism at work. This story makes me very sad and angry. This home was a single story structure. The family had no running water and no electricity, yet there were two other younger children living in it. The fire happened around four in the morning, as a candle got knocked over. It would seem to me that they must have been using this as a source of light. I would think that they'd need it to find their way to the washroom at night, especially with kids in the house, so they'd probably leave one burning. Even without hot water, I think that the toilet might still flush in Madison Wisconson, as they wouldn't be on a well water system. I looked at the weather network, and saw that, while it wasn't cold that night, it wasn't exactly warm either. Think about that; no heat and fall is starting to sneak in. There's that nip in the air.

`````I know how cruel kids can be, and I am imagining what it's like for these kids to go to school without being able to wash. By the way, these two kids had been taken into this family a couple of years back. They were not the natural children. The girl, Jamaya, was the daughter of the two adults living in the home.

`````For those who suggest that she should have been eating healthier, try doing that when there's no way to cook that food. She would have had to eat only food that was picked up already wrapped and ready to go.

`````The parents managed to get themselves out of the house, yet they left the three kids inside. There obviously was no functioning smoke detector inside the house. People panic in fires, so we can allow them rushing outside, perhaps. Some might suggest that even animals burn themselves in their attempts to get their kittens out of harms way. However, nobody knows what goes through a person's head when self preservation kicks in. That's why the investment in items such as smoke detectors, especially when there are kids in the house is wise. If Jamaya had health issues, she probably felt the smoke's effects before others.

`````I was disgusted in reading the comments on various sites. On the Daily News Online, one man had over 600 people agree with him when he suggested that this indicated that this is what happens when they hire female fire-fighters. At no time in the story was there anything to show that this correlated to that at all. This obviously indicated the bias of the reader. The story laid out clearly that the window wouldn't allow for Jamaya to be passed through, and by the time she reached the door, she had suffered smoke inhalation. Somebody else, who called himself a moniker which indicated that he was a N-hater (insert rest of the N word), went on a rant about it having been a good thing on another site. There was the usual fat hatred and racial crap.

`````This actually brings up a double standard. About a week ago, another girl died in New York. She was 17 and thin, with a different skin colour. She fell out a high rise window. She was also rich and good looking. The comments in her case were different; how sad and what a shame, even though she'd climbed out on a ledge to take a picture after a night of partying. What? Nothing about Darwinism at work? The loss of young people with potential is always a waste and an accident is always just that. I'm sick to death of journalists exploiting it.