Death is Yellow
for release 07-06-05
Washington D.C.
Every Sunday when I watch George Stephanopoulos' This Week on ABC I see yellow and get a catch in my throat when the In Memorium section plays, because the last thing they do is list the names of the U.S. servicemen who have died in Iraq or Afghanistan. These are such pointless deaths. Death is sadder when it is pointless and when it happens to the young.
Recently a young family member died in a car accident. He was twenty-two years old, filled with energy and kindness. Car accidents are such a sad and pointless way to die. It's not in the cause of freedom or liberation, it's just sad. Yet while we are upset when 25 soldiers die in Iraq in a week, 114 people die each day in car crashes in the U.S. But how do you put a value on pointless deaths? When a hundred Britons die in a subway bombing, is that worth more than 10,000 deaths in Darfur or Niger? What about the five hundred people who die each day from medical errors in our own hospitals?
Death, like life and time and morality is a relative matter. It's hard to put a value on it. Mass depends on your nearness to the speed of light.
How do you separate those that died in a building's collapse from those in an embassy or subway bombing or a famine or a car wreck or a war or by genocide? Maybe death is always pointless.
This reality is never more clear and apparent than when you attend the funeral of a young person. There were 300 people at Nick's funeral. He wasn't even a war hero. He was just a guy who liked cars and football and had a loving family and a slew of friends whose lives he had touched in his scant twenty-two years.
There have been slightly over 1800 soldiers killed in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in the past three years. Every year 16,000 people die in this country from accidental falls, fifty thousand in car accidents, thirty thousand commit suicide and seventeen thousand die by assault.
Who knows what life or death is worth? Does it count more when a celebrity or a tycoon or an athlete dies than when a skinny child expires in Niger surrounded by hunger and flies? I don't know. It's not my job to judge these things, simply to observe them.
I start seeing yellow at times like this. And I'm not talking about Mellow Yellow. I'm talking about flaming, creative, morning sunshine yellow. I'm talking about the Yellow Submarine which is the symbol of this planet, a vessel in which we all sail, powered by our yellow sun and yes I want to Tie a Yellow Ribbon round that old oak tree for all the young and lost in Iraq, I also want to tie one for those lost to disaster and sickness and accident. Every death counts the same. Which brings me to the Yellow Rose of Texas.
When Texans were fighting for independence, I'm sure that the Mexicans called it an insurgency. When the Mexican state of Coahuila y Tejas went into rebellion in late 1835 and declared itself independent on 2 March 1836 General Antonio López de Santa Anna invaded Texas to liberate it's people and to spread freedom and Catholicism. Sound familiar?
Santa Anna was a capable general and commanded formidable armies. He routed the Texans at Goliad and then at the Alamo in San Antonio. But as a prize of war he took a mulatto girl named Emily Morgan. She was, as they say in the South, High Yellow. She probably looked like Halle Barry. Santa Anna became smitten with her. He was so eager to enjoy the spoils of war that he pitched camp at San Jacinto and that is where Sam Houston got the drop on the Mexican army. While Santa Anna was busy in his tent, the Texans stormed into the camp. Emily became known as The Yellow Rose of Texas for providing the timely diversion. She didn't have to lay down her life to do it either, she just had to lay down. I wonder if Karl Rove is the Yellow TurdBlossom of Texas?
The Poet's Eye sees that death is merely a diversion from life. Paint it yellow. And remember the Alamo.
It's been three long years
Do ya still want me?
If I don't see a ribbon round the old oak tree
I'll stay on the bus
Forget about us
Put the blame on me
If I don't see a yellow ribbon round the old oak tree
--Tony Orlando and Dawn
