Day 80

Until now, you really couldn't get away with talking about sommeboy's mama. On
Tuesday [11/13/07], at the news that rapper Kanye West's mother, Donda, 58,
died of possible complications from cosmetic surgery -- reportedly including a
tummy tuck and breast reduction -- blog dwellers stepped over an imaginary line
of restraint. And stomped on it, again and again, monsters from the id coming
out to play: "hahahah too bad," one taunted. "VANITY KILLS!!!"
...
Increasingly, there's a tenor of mean-spiritedness creeping into public discourse,
a gleeful maliciousness.

Monsters. Monsters from the id.

I don't know what it is about this particular moment in human history which lends
itself to the sanction of miscellaneous and casual cruelty. [Cyberspace] has a 
way of making us feel like other people are informational artifacts. If you cut
data, it doesn't bleed. So you are at liberty to do anything you want to people
who are not people but merely images.

I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses,
affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject
to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same
winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you
tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us,
shall we not revenge?