You know the scenario all too well: the interstate has come to a dead stop and you’ve had the car in park for the last 10 minutes. After inching up after what seems like hours, you finally see it. Whether it’s a flat tire, a fender bender or a full-on car accident, traffic has stopped to see what has happened.
We’re drawn to tragedy. We’re ashamed by our affinity for it, but we nonetheless let it enthrall us. Some of us show our true colors by stopping to see car accidents, some watch reality television; and recently, others have been making an appalling effort to capitalize on the catastrophic fate of the Columbia space shuttle by auctioning wreckage and debris on eBay.
Where do we draw the line? That’s simple: the line should be clearly drawn between the way that calamity innately allures man, and man’s desires and attempts to deliberately capitalize on such disasters.
EBay representative Kevin Pursglove describes this sort of behavior as nothing new. “Over the years we have learned to keep an eye out for individuals who might want to list items once a tragic event has occurred, the best example being pieces of the World Trade Center and Pentagon.”
The surge of auctions featuring shuttle wreckage — like that following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks — reached an abrupt conclusion as sales were jerked from the Web site. Furthermore, federal authorities may have the culprits on their hands soon enough, pending eBay executives’ decision to report the sellers.
EBay indubitably can double as a “barometer of pop culture and current events,” as described by Associated Press correspondents in San Jose. The designers, sports teams and collectibles that are a click and a credit card away represent our favorites as a society. The auctions reveal music we listen to, clothes we wear, games we play and books we read. But where do situations such as the auction of Columbia, World Trade Center and Pentagon debris set us on the social scale? Perhaps somewhere between indecent and irreverent.
Despite the ostensible insolence of it all, these people recognize no considerable mourning period. No set amount of time after a catastrophe denotes when it is decent to sell the ruins, but there should be some sense of decorum in every human being, some part of our conscience that says, “This isn’t right.” It stops there in the more principled mind, but the average man may even go on to add, “At least not just yet.” At any rate, that sort of restraint is hardly much to ask.
If self-restraint and decorum isn’t your forte, I’ll throw in the legalities of it all. Try a federal offense on for size: removing any piece of destroyed aircraft that has been engaged in a crash or disaster could land you 10 years behind bars to match your $250,000 fine.