{"id":196,"date":"2005-09-05T19:26:15","date_gmt":"2005-09-05T23:26:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/metasj\/2005\/09\/05\/spitting-on-the-dead-too-good-for-them"},"modified":"2005-09-05T19:26:15","modified_gmt":"2005-09-05T23:26:15","slug":"spitting-on-the-dead-too-good-for-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/2005\/09\/05\/spitting-on-the-dead-too-good-for-them\/","title":{"rendered":"Spitting on the dead : too good for them"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

An increasingly neglected minority in the United States has gotten some
\nof the worst of the latest storming, flooding, infection and
\ndehydration deaths, largely overlooked by the press : the newly
\ndeceased..<\/p>\n

An unspecified number of corpses in the Superdome were left there for
\ndays.  Others were seen floating through the water by what seems
\nto be an entire regiment of amateur and professional reporters and
\nsupport staff.  People working with the dead feel the need to
\njustify their efforts — “Families need to know what happened to the people they lose,<\/span>” says<\/a>
\none Dr. Senn, a forensic dentist from San Antonio, in a Katrina-related
\ninterview.  I hadn’t realized leaving the dead to rot in anonymity
\nhad become a community-lifestyle choice.<\/p>\n


\n“<\/font>thousands of bloated corpses”… “<\/font>corpses lay abandoned in street medians”… “<\/font>corpses have been sighted on porches, sidewalks and flooded streets”… <\/font>“we’re
\nnot even dealing with dead bodies”… “floating in canals, slumped in
\nwheelchairs, abandoned on highways and medians and hidden in attics”…<\/font>\n<\/div>\n

\nEven in a city bereft of order and shepherds, there are always<\/a> alternatives<\/a>. 
\nEven a gob of tobacco spit on a dead man’s face is a reminder that
\nsomeone saw fit to walk right up and leave a remembrance. 
\nAbandoning bodies to float and decay at will, even those of strangers,
\nis worse ignominy still.  Have we forgotten what it means to honor the dead?<\/p>\n

Reading about the Great Galveston Hurricane reminds me that this has
\noften been the result of disasters; I wonder how that has played out in
\nother countries and times.   Certainly the 1900 Galveston
\ndisaster, with 2 corpses per rescue worker, was a very different story
\nthan the latest NO disaster, with a ratio of more like 1:10.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An increasingly neglected minority in the United States has gotten some of the worst of the latest storming, flooding, infection and dehydration deaths, largely overlooked by the press : the newly deceased.. An unspecified number of corpses in the Superdome were left there for days.  Others were seen floating through the water by what seems […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":135,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[212],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-null"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iVvB-3a","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/135"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}