IRONY + TRAGEDY = STATUS QUO

So this became pretty ironic to me or at the very least a little unsettling. I am just getting around to writing this up, but it happened on the 11th. One of the members of Eminem's band, D-12, was shot and killed outside a downtown club. No evidence has been released, to my knowledge. But some of the things surrounding this struck me - such as this, from the article,

"The video for the Eminem song "Like Toy Soldiers" shows Eminem pacing a hospital hallway as doctors try to revive Proof, who has been shot. Later, Eminem attends Proof's funeral as the song's lyrics lament the escalation in violence between rappers."

That's just a little too much for me. Self-fulfilling you may say? I wondered myself. This whole affair just highlights some major problems with young pop-culture and the society it fuels. And I'm not talking about just sub-urbs or blacks or minorities, because Eminem and D-12's influence is as wide-spread as the iPod.

I am interested to hear thoughts that events like this spawn. There are certainly ones that I have that center around the carte blanche we give celebrity in our modern world as well as the transferred reality that the media at large creates in cooperation with our young. In my heart it is a tragedy on about 25 levels.