Vol. 3 No. 24 My Thoughts on Yesterday's Boston Marathon Tragedy

Rita Jeptoo and Lelisa Desisa Benti will never get their deserved recognition for their victories at Boston yesterday.  Instead we will remember two bombs exploding amongst spectators and seeing the graphic video and still photos of victims and rescuers.

Our sport was assaulted, and I feel the emotions of anger, shock, grief, and confusion about what to do.  At this time we don’t know toward whom to direct our anger or how to console the wounded.  We can only be glad it wasn’t us lying on the ground hoping that someone could  help us and help us now.

Today the back page of my local paper described briefly the deaths of 35 people in Iraq from bombings yesterday.  This a  weekly if not daily occurrence in some countries, and I cannot begin to understand how those countries deal with such terrible and frequent events.

We may see the bill for security rising again, but I certainly hope that our response will not be one of military retaliation if a foreign organization is found to be the culprit of the Boston bombing.  I don’t think we or the world can  afford the type of revenge that we have been dishing out the past ten years at many of the wrong people in the wrong places at great sacrifice to our armed forces and at great cost to ourselves.  In  our entertainment industry we glorify these types of events that yesterday shocked us.  If a movie or video game doesn’t have enough explosions and falling bodies, it isn’t going to attract audiences and make profits.  Yet when the real deal descends on us we are overwhelmed by the  reality. 

George Brose