The Zong

Yesterday, at a benefit event for a charity called Cars For Kids in Tennessee, 6 people were killed while watching a drag car doing an “exhibition burnout.” The video shows the car burning out down a lane bordered on both sides by thousands of spectators.

Liberal that I am, I’ve been to exactly one drag race in my life, but the people who organized that shit probably knew how dangerous a car moving at that speed can be to a huge crowd of people, because they had huge barricades on each side, and the crowd was not allowed to get closer than 30 or 40 feet from the track, if I recall correctly. I should note that many people have still been killed at drag races even with these precautions.

So I guess maybe I’m an asshole for saying this, but it pisses me off when something like this gets news coverage and everyone calls it a “tragedy” or and “unfortunate accident.”

Events like car shows and stunt shows draw large audiences, and the Tennessee tragedy raises questions about how safe it is to stand in the crowds.

“It did careen into the fans, which was extremely unfortunate,” said Robin Ammon, author of “Sport Facility Management” and an expert in crowd management.

It “raises questions,” now, does it? What kinds of questions were raised by the dumb fucks who organized the event when they were told that a giant drag-racing exhibition was going to be held in between two huge crowds of people? What country is this?

I think it’s time that we start to ration the word “tragedy” in our national consciousness. While it is really terrible that people were killed at this event, and they will be mourned, calling this a “tragedy” really kind of distracts people from how stupid the people involved actually were, and gives much more credibility than is deserved to those who organized it.

Like using the word “hero” to describe just about everyone, the usage of “tragedy” to describe every time someone dies for no reason dilutes the word beyond meaning, and discourages people from talking about what actually happened. In this case, what actually happened is that a bunch of people died because nobody who organized this charity event (ironically, to raise funds for disabled kids) thought it was a bad idea to run a bunch of fucking DRAG RACERS through a crowd of people. If there’s a tragedy here, it’s that there was no law preventing this from happening, and that the response will be simply to hang our heads and say that this was “unfortunate.” On the contrary, from where I’m watching, these deaths were pretty much inevitable.

- M.G.