Bathos should be banned in Boston

Let’s put a stop to the Boston bathos. It’s cheap and meaningless. Yes, the Marathon bombing was a dramatic crime, with pain and sadness and now sheer puzzlement at why it came about. However, it was not the crime of the century: the century is young and so far 9/11 casts a long shadow on it.

So let's not inflate the significance of every last detail and every last bystander. Certainly, let's not create "sacred" public space (isn't that unconstitutional, anyway?).

Death is one of the most common human experiences. Maybe we should learn to talk about it normally. Let's stop spending our lives pretending death doesn't exist. Let's -- gasp! -- tell the children.

Death and taxes, said Ben Franklin. Love and death, said Woody Allen (at the very end of "Sleeper"). Certainties. Inevitable. Painful.

Significance inflation is a phenomenon I date back to the death of Princess Diana.

Remember the sea of white wrapping paper in front of Buckingham Palace? (One should take the wrapping off when leaving flowers; the flowers will wilt and bio-degrade on their own, but the wrapping is just more fodder for landfills.)

In the United States, 9/11 and the phony "war on terror" brought us instant “heroes” -- just add tears and stir.

Getting shot while in uniform makes you very unlucky. It’s sad for the family and as a human being it’s a loss to all of us. But it’s not heroic unless there was actual heroism involved. Heroism involves  valor, prowess, gallantry, bravery, courage, daring and fortitude.

The MIT guard shot dead, mostly as part of a misdeed going sour, was surely a decent person, but nothing in what happened suggests heroism on his part.

Lastly, let’s not canonize pretty young women when they unknowingly happen to be at the wrong place and the wrong time. Joan of Arc was young, and some say beautiful and courageous, but she actually sought out the struggle that got her martyred. To be a martyr is to give witness to a conviction or faith to the point of death; it involves a conscious choice.

The death of the young bystander was, again, bad luck. A fluke. I was painfully embarrassed by maudlin public display put on by her mother.

In sum, now that the adrenalin is down, let's be sensible.

Welcome to Hell, Margaret Thatcher

Meet your buddies Ronald Reagan and Caspar Weinberger and all the merry crew who stole from the mouths of miners' and steelworkers' children in the 1980s, to give to barons, dukes and captains of industry.

Welcome to hell, bitch. Roast until your skin becomes a carpet of boils each one standing for each union you destroyed, every worker family you dispossessed.

Abolish all legal marriage

The Anarchists were right. Marriage, like wage slavery, is a legal device designed to oppress women. Now it is being claimed by gays. Rather than open up this instrument of oppression and discontent to gays, why not simply get the State out of the business of weddings?

Of course, the Anarchists would have abolished the State, in favor of voluntary social associations. That might be going too far. Or perhaps not?

But let's not get distracted from my main point: marriage under civil law in a religiously neutral system of government is, at best, a contract. It does not have a track record of working very well and as soon as people found a way to get out of it, they have done so in enormous numbers.

In the United States, one out of every two marriages ends in divorce. By various soundings, a majority of men and women admit to adultery. Domestic violence is a rampant social problem.

Why have marriage at all?

I'm not saying people would be forbidden to go to a church and promise the lifelong fidelity that most will not observe. Go, have your church wedding with all the nine yards -- or do some ceremony on a hilltop reciting poetry or whatever.

Why do I, and every taxpayer you don't know, have to be involved in this?

I'm not saying that we should abandon all child protection laws that are built around marriage. Children still need all the protection society can offer -- which at present is not stellar.

Nor am I saying that cohabiting couples should not have a claim to insurance for cohabiters, or parents or whatever; nor that a longstanding cohabiter should have some priority in inheritance.

Nor am I saying abolish love. Although, seriously, what does marriage under civil law have to with love?

Just abolish the pretense that the State has an inherent interest in marriage that it does not have. Marriage may be a religious idea, but the State has no business with religion -- nor, I would argue, marriage.