SONTAG AWARD NOMINEE

“How does it feel to the rest of the world to see the care lavished on the parings of American bodies in death, such as no complete third world body ever receives in life? What do they think in the Indian town where 20,000 died in an earthquake earlier this year? I couldn’t remember Bhuj’s name, perhaps because it disappeared off our TV screens within a week. Here’s a consumer’s guide to our hierarchy of death. If you want yours to signify in the media and public debate, and your relatives to be decently compensated, make sure you a) are white, and b) a westerner, c) die quickly, dramatically, and spectacularly (not slowly of a disease of poverty or occupational illness), and that d) your death is witnessed by millions, preferably on television; e) if possible, own a mobile.” – Anne Karpf in the Guardian, complaining about the efforts to identify the dead at Ground Zero.