Reality television and tabloid journalism bear some responsibility here.
I miss the quiet longing of considering everything I cannot possibly know. We no longer have the luxury of not being able to ever truly know. We no longer have the luxury of curiosity, of wondering what life might be like for someone different. We no longer have the luxury of disbelief, of being able to believe some ideas or practices are too strange to be true. I don’t want to be in the position of being able to judge or ridicule the ugliness and the strangeness of this world. I don’t really want to know about this dog-breastfeeding woman. I don’t really want to know what a man looks like when his face has been cannibalized. The image was repulsive and shocking, salaciously so, and there I was, staring at it, slightly nauseous, wishing there was some way I could un-see what I had seen. On this same website, months ago, I saw a picture of a man’s face after it had been eaten off by another, drug-crazed man. The website where I learned about this woman is appropriately named Gawker. Every time I think I’ve heard or seen it all, I can go online and be proven so very wrong. I was wasting time online when I came across an article about a woman who breastfeeds her dog and has been doing so for the past two years.
