At the end of the Libyan dictator’s life, images of Moammar Gadhafi’s bloodied corpse seem to have plastered themselves on almost every news outlet across the globe, feeding consumers’ curiosity about what had happened during his dramatic capture.
The images and videos of the former leader before and after his death are disturbingly vivid – his lifeless body sprawled across a truck, blood trickling down his ghastly face with rebels chanting around him.
For the rebels, it was a momentous occasion. There is no doubt that his death is a reality that will go down in the pages of history. But there is also no doubt that the way society is treating his death has crossed the boundary of inappropriateness.
For newspapers, the death of Gadhafi has served as merely nothing more than shock value content.
The most controversial of these issues was The Sun’s front-page article: “That’s for Lockerbie, Gadhafi,” written by the personally affected, Virginia Wheeler. The tabloid article was obviously written as a revenge piece, yet it received positive acclaim and praise with readers jumping to Wheeler’s defense when newspaper critics attacked her article.
To this day, content surrounding Gadhafi’s death is still atop many news websites, the most recent and most absurd being a cell phone recorded video of a rebel sodomizing the former leader with a stick – a video that received more than 11,000 hits.
Granted, Gadhafi is guilty of numerous unjust acts and holds the blood of thousands killed on in his hands when he ruled Libya with an iron-fist, yet inversely; here we are treating his grizzly death like an awards ceremony. We praise and celebrate it. We write about it and throw a big picture of his bloodied face on the front cover of the newspaper.
Exactly, what type of society are we living in today when news consumers and skeptics have such a craving for blood?
Did we, as humans, forget that Gadhafi, though wrong and dehumanizing as he may have been during his 41-year reign, was human too?
Perhaps society should finally throw the past behind them and finally get over Gadhafi. His death has not only been treated as a trophy, but has also illustrated the bloodlust among us today.
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