Sense and Sensitivity

A couple of things intersect:

"Pope apologizes to Muslims"
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/living/religion/15545337.htm

"No surprise Irwin came to grief, author Greer says"
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/SYD59156.htm

This takes me back to my first year at Grad School here in the U.S. I learned that one of my classmates from undergrad had tragically died in a car accident in downtown Chicago. To what extent AJ himself was under the influence I don't know but he and two others were passengers in a car driven by another friend who was heavily under the influence of alcohol, which was deemed to be the primary cause of the accident. They were returning from a night out at a bar or were bar hopping.

I felt sad and pained but most of all I felt angry. Their deaths like countless others' could have easily been prevented. I felt that somehow I expected more of him and he had let me down by performing such a stupid act. I said as much to my friend who was also a close friend of AJ's.

All that was carried across between my lips to his ears - All that my friend heard was my calling AJ stupid. Usually I overanalyze words that come out of my mouth. But on that day with such a tragic happening fresh on my mind, I guess that self-censor was turned off. Now, I take even more care...

Well, what I'm coming to is that with a public image comes the great responsibility to be more sensitive and the onus to be restrained. With tensions brewing in the wake of middle-east happenings, 9/11 and the Danish cartoon, I am stunned that a public figure such as the Pope had not vetted his words before he spake them. For a Pope, being a religious figure head, I count sensitivity to be a bigger qualification than scholarliness.

Sensitivity is more sensible than truth or free speech.

In my personal opinion, Steve Irwin picking up a poisonous spider and saying "Crikey! Look at this beauty!" seemed to be intentionally ridiculous in pursuit of showmanship but what I found even more ridiculous and somewhat ironic was an author being insensitive to Steve's death by calling him "massively insensitive" to wild animals.

This temporary lack of sensitivity among people in high positions is not isolated to The Papa.
These remarks by then Harvard President, Lawrence Summers, created uproar and was one of the contributing factors to the eventual resignation of an otherwise brilliant man:
http://www.president.harvard.edu/speeches/2005/nber.html -- Seriously, read through the speech. I wish I had been there.

I know first hand, my subcutaneous reaction to Tharoor's Eulogy on RKN. See http://terrywhatlee.blogspot.com/2006/03/tharoor.html.

May be as a society we have encouraged people to develop and possess a thick hide to all forms of "free speech" and even celebrate it as a virtue that we are losing touch with what's one of the most human of characteristics.