Heartless

I'm sure most of my holiday-time posts will be full of the appropriate good cheer, but here's a quick rantlet:

On the way to the airport the other morning, Halfling and I were listening to one of my favorite talk shows, and we were both appalled by some of the things we were hearing from callers. The subject was the shooting death last week of Damageplan/ex-Pantera guitarist "Dimebag Darrell" Abbott and several others at a Columbus nightclub. Anyway, host Mike Gallagher had received several calls and emails from people saying that, since the guy took his nickname from the drug culture and was in a band that occasionally had obscene lyrics, nobody should be shedding any tears over his death. Wow. To me, that's just...heartless. Sure, the guy wasn't exactly a role model in many ways, but come on, show some kind of compassion, will ya? The guy went to work one night--just like anyone else, if on a larger stage, literally and figuratively--and some deranged fan (who the papers are now saying had some sort of schizophrenia) came in and shot him dead. Even if you don't agree with Darrell's lifestyle choices, surely you have to feel something when you hear a story like that, especially since those choices didn't really contribute to his demise; the guy was simply doing his job. I agree with what Gallagher said: there's no reason to make Darrell a martyr or put him on a pedestal or anything, but c'mon, let's have a little heart here...

I'll admit that the contrast between the peaceful death of Frederick Fennell and the violent one of Darrell Abbott did seem to be keeping in line with their particular genres of music (classical and heavy metal, respectively), but that's not always the case. This was reinforced this morning when I read about the symphonic conductor who shot himself to death in an L.A. cathedral early this morning. So much for stereotypes...