The real victim

It was very strange to watch the flow of information regarding yesterday's plane crash. As far as I could tell, the steps that occurred were:

1. There was a plane crash in NYC
2. We don't think it was a terrorist attack
3. We are confident that it was an accident
4. The plane was registered to Cory Lidle
5. Lidle might have been on the plane
6. Lidle was killed on the plane
7. Did Lidle intentionally crash the plane and kill himself?

There are a few things that I think are interesting about this whole process. First of all, there seemed to be two peaks of news frenzy regarding this. The first was when the crash first occurred and it was still unclear as to if it was an attack or not. The second was when it was confirmed that Lidle was on the plane. What is to be taken from the fact that the second news peak appeared to be much larger than the first? Does it mean that people (the media?) are more interested in the death of a celebrity (though I think it is a bit of a stretch to claim that Cory Lidle was a household name before yesterday) than a possible terrorist attack? Or, does it speak to the fact that most people were willing to dismiss the possibility of another plane crash terrorist attack when they first heard the news? In some ways, this strikes me as a good thing, that we are not jumping straight to the "oh my god, we are being attacked again" like we have in past (being a person that tried to fly out of Newark Airport on November 12, 2001, I can tell you how frustrating that reaction can be). Of course, it is also frustrating to see how people treat this accident differently once a famous person was identified as being involved. Is the death of a baseball player any more tragic than anyone else?

Along those lines, there is one other thing that jumped out to be watching the news is the fact that I only saw questions of a possible suicide raised after Lidle was identified. Was he any more likely to attempt suicide than anyone else? Were the questions asked because of the Yankee's recent postseason loss? Or, do we have a greater need to attach an immediate and dramatic reason to the death of a celebrity than to that of an unidentified individual?


Finally, it was very strange that a number of the news outlets were running this picture of Alec Baldwin during the story. Why is he involved with this story? Why should anyone care that he was trying to get to the crash scene?