thoughts on heath ledger and other things

heath ledger's death caught me by total shock, and i don't really know why. that's to say it's not really like i knew him or anything about him. i know i felt sadness for several reasons, but i think i felt an eeriness because i was so captivated by the scenes of his portrayal of the joker in the forthcoming batman movie - so much so that i wrote about it in the post before last. then to hear suggestions that the role might have contributed to his death - even if it just caused him to lose sleep and seek sleeping pills - i felt guilt at celebrating a performance that might have led to such a tragedy.

in the media coverage of all this, it is encouraging to see even the slightest restraint in pronouncing his death. i suppose the restraint is mostly an unavoidable consequence of having to wait for toxicology reports. after that comes out, all bets are off. but at least there are efforts have the facts - as much as we can have - before pronouncing judgment. i suppose i'm particularly attuned to this because i just finished reading a book about the duke lacrosse case. since i was there for the whole thing, i promised myself it'd be several years before i read any of the books about it. but i heard this one (Until Proven Innocent) being read on NPR and decided to go ahead.

of course the main feature of the book exposes the rush to judge the lacrosse team regardless of the facts and the general refusal to admit this fault once the charges had been totally disproven. during the events i tried to remain as objective as possible. i certainly didn't clamor for their heads (or other body parts) as the extremists did - possibly because i'm a white male, and i don't feel either trait makes me inherently evil or criminal. but i guess having the respect for due process that i have also cautions me about rushing to judgment. i can't say i didn't feel that deep down something probably happened at that party - but i look back and realize that's generally all that was presented to me by the media, even at ground zero (with the usual exception of The Chronicle - duke's student newspaper, which i read often, but not daily). for a long time it wasn't really a question of whether or not a sexual assault occurred; it was what happened and who did it? but the principle characters responsible for shaping the story did not stop at the first scene and honestly account for the facts.

regardless of what the facts end up concluding (or suggesting - as total conclusion may never be possible) about ledger's death, it is a tragedy. i think that's really all we can say and perhaps all we should.