Tasteless dress-up and morality

Apparently there’s a brouhaha in Derry about some youngsters getting dressed up in Osama bin Laden outfits. Quite a number of people are upset by it – they see it as being in very poor taste.

Well I suppose if I had had a relative or friend killed in the attack on the Twin Towers, I’d be less than thrilled by such dress-up too. But I’d almost lay money that those complaining didn't have friends or relatives who died. (Mind you I’ve no evidence one way or another, but that’s never stopped southern commentators in their questions to Martin McGuinness, so why should it stop me?)

No,  I think if we want to feel Outraged or even Insulted, we might think of the 25,000 + people who died needlessly on 11 September 2001. Especially as around 20,000 of them were five years old or under. Because that’s the number of people who died of starvation that day. And today. And every day in between.  Those are UN figures, by the way. Or consider the fact that one in every eight children in the US goes to bed hungry. If you’re non-white and a child, you’re twice as likely to hit the sack with an empty belly.  If the money intended for ten Stealth Bombers were used otherwise, 100,000,000 people’s lives could be saved.  Count the noughts -  one hundred million.

We’ve each got a limited supply of moral outrage/indignation. So maybe we’d be better employed directing same at what is happening every day around the world rather than fretting over some Derry dressy-up stuff. Anyway, Osama is yesterday’s World Villain. We’ve got real live villains who work hard to keep this kind of global obscenity in place.