OT: RIP Fred Shuttlesworth

[rugbysecondrow]

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-fred-shuttlesworth-20111006,0,752108.story

The Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth, a blunt-talking preacher who braved beatings, bombings and fire-hosings to push Birmingham, Ala., to the forefront of the civil rights movement and advanced the historic fight with a confrontational strategy that often put him at odds with its most charismatic leader, died Wednesday. He was 89.

[Fixed]

we lost another great american

[binxnyrwarrsoul]

"Tell the Klan I ain't leaving"

Balls the size of cantelopes.

R.I.P. Fred Shuttlesworth.

[fogrider]

yeah, he pretty much looked the devil in the eye and faced him down. he took a beat down from the man and he stood up for our humanity. R.I.P.

[6mt]

a man with true courage.

[roguedog]

amen. be at peace and thank you for helping make it a better world

[fiamme red]

http://gawker.com/5847338/steve-jobs-was-not-god

So, Steve Jobs is dead. A tech genius has passed on. Sad. Certainly a devastating loss to Steve Jobs' close friends and family members, as well as to Apple executives and shareholders. The rest of you? Calm down.

Among my Facebook friends yesterday, more than one wrote publicly that they were "crying" or "can't stop crying" or "teared up" due to Steve Jobs' death. Really now. You can't stop crying, now that you've heard that a middle-aged CEO has passed on, after a long battle with cancer? If humans were always so empathetic, well, that would be understandable. But this type of one-upmanship of public displays of grief is both unbecoming and undeserved.

Real outpourings of public grief should be reserved for those people who lived life so heroically and selflessly that they stand as shining examples of love for all of humanity. People like, for example, the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, who—along with his family—was bombed, beaten, and stabbed during his years of principled activism in the US civil rights movement. Shuttlesworth died yesterday, the same day as Steve Jobs. He did not die a billionaire.

Death, of course, is not a competition. All deaths are sad for the living. Everyone deserves to be mourned, and well-known people will inevitably be mourned more loudly than others. But it is actually important to keep our grief in perspective. When we start mourning technocrats as idols, we cheapen the lives of those who have sacrificed more for their fellow man...