It shouldn't, but the media has made nine-year-old Christina-Taylor Green stand out from the rest of the victims of the Tucson shooting. We hear all about this straight A student, the young dancer and gymnast and charity worker who was interested in politics and, who knows, could have some day been our congresswoman, or more. We cry and mourn for all the lost potentials.
Little, in comparison, is heard of the others who were killed.
The death of a child, especially one from a good, middle class family, is more shocking, more moving, than the death of any adult who's not a public figure. This the current way of our society. We make children sacrosanct, project into them all that's good and innocent and optimistic -- all that we are not. This tendency motivated the making of "Faces of Hope" -- the paperback collection of photos of babies born on 9/11, of which Christina was one. It was as though by looking at pictures of these cute, innocent children, we could shed a tear while nodding to ourselves: yes, everything will be okay.
I don't like it. I can't quite put a finger on why. Perhaps because there is some element of fetishization in how we invest in the faces of children. Perhaps it's how politicians often capitalize on this widely accepted fetishization for their political agendas, making "Protecting our Children" a slogan in crusades against all things (and people) that they find harmful to their children.
Of course, it's not surprising that we should feel impelled to have a special interest in protecting children as opposed to people much older -- perhaps it's an evolutionary trait that leads to higher chances of survival for our specie. But then again, everyone is created equal; maybe that applies to children, too. Maybe their lives and deaths are, or should be, equal to anyone else's. To see them as something more important might affirm an ideology that could do harm as well as good. After all, if we believe that some lives are worth more than the rest, that would also mean certain other lives are worth less.
Don't get me wrong. I love kids. And I grieve for Christina, but had she lived and an eighty-year-old died, I would see it as no less of a tragedy.
No Country for Old Men
For Christ was baby Jesus first, lying meek
And mild in manger hay, all cute and hallowed.
He suffered little children -- His first pick
For Kingdom Heaven soon to come. Let’s follow
The Child: Tiny Tim will bless everyone
While Annie greets tomorrow, o’er and over.
And only someone dead, or made of stone
Would shrug off waif Cossette who’s on the poster.
May angels, fair-haired toddlers, save your soul,
And little drummer boy sings to keep you warm.
Even when bombed out, many laid low,
You have ‘faces of hope’ in fifty newborns.
The future’s balance hangs on the fingertips
Of he who scooters, or smears his face in Cool Whip,
Who crawls around the floor, or coos in cribs,
Or sucks his thumb in amniotic fluid.
O dear Child, leader of Tomorrow,
Saviour of our world, our faith, our Life
Let’s kneel before your feet, or tail, and also
Rid you of things awful, or we die.