This week, our nation’s news industry, with the aid of social networks like Twitter and Facebook, christened the beginning of one famous figure and the end of another with the rough equivalent of a media jumbo jet.
We said goodbye to Whitney Houston and hello to Jeremy Lin – and haven’t stopped saying it since.
In the wake of Houston’s tragic passing on Saturday evening, the entire nation exploded with an outpouring of media-driven sadness rivaling that of Michael Jackson’s death. Houston was praised during The Grammy Awards the following evening under the pastorship of LL Cool J, and has been the subject of constant media grief during this entire week. She has been trending on Twitter, canonized on Facebook and examined from every tragic angle by the online news sources. Perhaps rightly so, and perhaps not.
Houston deserves the attention and grief due to a great artist and a terrible loss to music and our nation. However, perhaps the American media should remember that as terrible as her passing is, there is still loss, pain, hunger and injustice in our world. We should mourn, but we should also move on to the matters at hand and those we will come to face.
Houston would doubless prefer to be remembered with respect and love – not with 24-hour eulogies of 140 characters when more pressing issues face our society. We will love and miss both her and her music, but the media must move on so the nation can follow its example.
New York Knicks basketball star Jeremy Lin also roared onto virtual headlines this week and has been dubbed by ESPN as “the hottest thing in sports.” A Harvard graduate and model of the self-made star, Lin has spiked basketball viewership, created a multi-million dollar clothing line and patented the slogan “Linsanity” in a single week – with the help of our social networks and media.
With tweets hailing him as “the most LINteresting man in the world,” it is plain that Lin is good – very good. He is dynamic, talented, social, humble and a model of professional athletics. He’s a good athlete and needs his coverage – but so, too, do the violence, war and social problems facing our nation.
Our news media and social networks are excellent venues to pay tribute to our greatest stars, both rising and falling. They also serve to champion justice and forward noble causes, and should behave as such.