Back in November, I wrote an opinion column for the Spartan Daily about the Dhaliwal brothers suing the City of San Francisco and the San Francisco Zoo for their injuries and damages relating to it.
I dismissed it as a money grab. The two deserved the mauling because the evidence strongly says the brothers and the victim, Carlos Sousa Jr., taunted the tigers, resulting in one female tiger to view them as a three-course meal.
Did I mention all three allegedly took drugs the day of the incident?
Now, the Sousa family is suing the city and zoo. His situation isn't as the open-and-shut case the Dhaliwal's case is, mostly because he's dead.
Perhaps some kind of compensation is necessary in the form of payment for medical bills and the funeral, and maybe some pain and suffering. The Sousa family still lost a loved one and deserves some sympathy for it.
The problem is Sousa was also teasing the tiger, just like the Dhaliwal brothers. Should the standard be any different?
Unfortunately for the Sousa family, my answer is still no. We as a society need to treat stupidity much like terrorism - we need to stop negotiating with the people who perpetrate it, rewarding people for it through lawsuits, and encouraging people for it.
Even though his family were not the ones who acted idiotically, we as a society can't reward them for it. Survival of the fittest doesn't always refer to brute strength and endurance of harsh conditions. It also means you're smart enough to not get yourself hurt or killed. This case, however tragic, is a modern day example of it.
The Dhaliwal's deserve nothing. I reserve empathy for people who are hurt in actual accidents, not stupidity resulting in pain and anguish.
--
An update - According to SFGate.com, an artist named John Engdahl has put together a tribute to the tiger Tatiana on the one year anniversary of the attack, and put it near Coit Tower.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment