Freezing to death=Funny?

He's been referred to as the "Bumcicle," because his legs were sticking out of the ice like "Popsicle sticks" when the Detroit News found him.

A most likely homeless man had frozen to death in an abandoned warehouse. The body was encased in 2-3 feet to ice. The people that found it didn't call the police. The person who tipped off the reporter for the Detroit News called the reporter first.

A copy editor from the Detroit News spoke to my copy editing class yesterday about the ethics of running a graphic picture of the scene. But humor, really shouldn't enter into that story. I understand "gallows humor," a joke during a decidedly sad time, but cracking jokes to my class about it...it's... unprofessional? Cold?

We can't empathize with everything that goes on around us. We can't stop and give money to every cause that asks for it. We can't react with utter horror and sadness each time a new round of death errupts somewhere far away. We as people can't take an emotional connection to everything. We experience overload, or in the cases with a lot of professionals, becoming jaded.

But there has to be respect.

This man died alone, in the dark, on the floor of an abandoned Detroit warehouse, and people call him the "Bumcicle." They laugh about it. There are more horrible ways to die, but this person's history and life story ended atop cardboard in the dark, with probably no one around.

I woke up this morning and the furnace had quit working. It was 55 degrees inside, and it felt like 30. Freezing to death seems like a horrible way to die.


http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090129/METRO08/901290400

This is the link to the story- hope it works.