OK, I know I’m going to get bashed for this, but I don’t care. I think I have a valid point, and that’s all that matters… I certainly don’t mean any offense towards those in the mists of mourning over their loss. If you are one of these people, just try to picture this from a 3rd party perspective and appreciate the humor and point as intended.
Through this sincere post, I found a link to this story in the Houston Chronicle about a 21 year old Yale student who was killed while cycling cross-country with four of her fellow students.
Please read the rest of the story out of respect for the poor girl and her friends and family. However, I will paste here the part of the story I found of consequence:
Rachel *******, 21, of Houston, the daughter of Houston patent attorney Howard ******* and Melinda *******, a teacher, was a graduate of the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, where she had studied the vocal arts.
“Rachel had a very full, but short life,” said Howard *******. At Yale, ******* was majoring in music history, said her mother.
“Even though she has enough talent to perform, that can be a very tough life. Her ambition was to go on to graduate school and become a music history professor for a top-notch university,” Melinda ******* said.
So, let me get this straight… She studied vocal arts at one of those preppy exclusive high schools for the “gifted” and then went on to Yale on mommy and daddy’s dime to study in the glorious field of music history.
W
T
F
?!
Honestly, I think this is just Darwin in action… God decided this girl was wasting her life so horribly that there was simply no reason for her to continue on to its inevitable end. Why not just save her 70+ years of misery and skip to the end of the movie?
I mean, come on… I bet she even thought she knew all about the “typical teenage experience” too, didn’t she? What with her public school upbringing (ha, riiiggghhhttt) and her ivy league higher education, she was an expert on the topic. To top it all off, once she got out of Yale, she had no need to go get a summer job like the rest of America, but rather had nothing more important or pressing on her schedule than to take a bike trip across the country
The way I see it, it was just mother nature evening out the system. She saw a horrible injustice being done by further attempting to propagate this wanna-be field of study (music history?!) and got rid of a future source of misery for many many students.
But hey, that’s just me
Author’s Disclaimer: As noted above, I have nothing against this girl, nor her family. I do not know her personally and could be totally wrong about her life in general. I’m simply attempting to illustrate the way common media is able to twist and portray every situation in any light they desire, and how the classes of American society have become so greatly divided that some “Ivy Leaguers” could have nothing better to do than ride bikes for fun during their summer sabbatical while others are struggling to help their family provide groceries next month. This is more of a commentary on the state of society as a whole, rather than that of a single life in particular.
Update: After reading this entry, please direct your attention to the comments below. There are some very sincere and heartfelt views expressed which I have not and did not intend to address in this post. Before commenting, they deserve your time as well…
Update 2: As requested by Brian Barnes, a grieving friend of Rachel, I have removed all occurrences of her last name and replaced them with ******* in the hopes that Google and Yahoo! will both re-index my site sometime in the near future and remove the old entry, preventing further mishaps such as this. I will soon do the same for all comments listed on this page…
Sir,
Rachel was one of my closest friends, and since I learned of her death three days ago, I’ve been googling her name and reading everything on the internet I could find about her. For the first day or so most of the articles that appeared were from her life – articles she’d written for one of Yale’s humor magazines, a write up about an opera she’d been in, things she’d done in high school. Soon articles about her death began to appear including the one from the Houston Chronicle you cite in your post. The Chronicle also ran a second story about Rachel yesterday here:
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/front/3233909
I hope you’ll read this story because unlike the first story, it actually talks about who Rachel was and why she was special to so many people.
I found your post to be quite upsetting and I’m confident that if you leave it up I won’t be the only person close to Rachel who finds it. To that end, I’m asking you to take the post down as soon as possible. Rachel’s friends and family are already going through enough without this completely unprovoked and unjustifiable attack on her memory.
Brian Barnes
I should also note that the Rachel wasn’t just ‘riding bikes for fun over the summer.’ She was using her cross-country bike trip as a means of raising money for Habitat for Humanity. When she died, she’d already raised over $4,000 for charity.
Mr. Barnes,
As I said in my original post, I have nothing against Rachel personally. I’d also like to add something I left out quite by accident: my sincere regret for your loss. Losing a family member or close friend is never an easy thing to deal with. If there is anything I can do to help ease the pain of this tragedy for you, please let me know.
However, I’m not willing to remove my story. I don’t believe in censorship of any type, and still believe in what I wrote. That said, I do plan to post an update to this entry directing any future readers to these comments. They deserve to read your heartfelt response and be exposed to the lighter side of this story.
After reading the second article by the Houston Chronicle you linked to, a few new items have come to light. You are correct about the bike trip. While my point about not having a summer job to help support her family is still very much valid (yet not necessarily derogatory in any way), I realize now she was not simply doing it “for fun”, but rather to help raise money to benefit others. Certainly a noble cause which should be respected.
Unfortunately, reading the second article actually makes me hate and envy her even more.
There’s something you’ve got to hate about people who are perfect at everything they do. Whether it’s actually hatred or simply subconscious jealousy, the manifestation of those human emotions is the same: ridicule and scorn.
Rachel ******* did indeed have a very remarkable and full life. I apologize to all those I have offended with this story. Please believe me, it was not my intention. I ask that you not take anything I have written here as a personal attack against her individually, for it is all said out of jealousy. She spends her summer riding cross-country while I spend mine working 40+ hours a week in a 6x6 cubicle farm.
May you somehow find peace in the coming weeks and find a fitting way to honor the memory of this beautiful girl.
Chris,
I think it would be easier if we had this conversation over the telephone. My number is (918) 914-3815. Please call me at your earliest convenience.
Brian
Brian,
I’m afraid I’m unavailable for comment over the phone. You are however welcome to email me at chris@doesnthaveone.com if you would like to further our conversation in a more private venue, as others have chosen to do.
Chris,
If you’ll email me your phone number, I’m happy to pay for any long distance charges (brian.barnes@yale.edu). I think it will be difficult for us to have the sort of discussion we need to have via emails or webpostings.
Brian
I’m currently at work and commenting and returning emails between juggling other projects. As I said, I’m afraid I’m unavailable via telephone.
Chris,
The reason I’m so adament about talking to you over the telephone is that I’m not interested in engaging you in some sort of intellectual debate about the merits of censorship or social equality. Instead, what I want to do is ask you a very personal favor. This is an extremely difficult time for a number of people who are likely to stumble across your post because it includes Rachel’s name. These people aren’t interested in your opinions but are likely to be subjected to this very hurtful post because you, knowing absolutely nothing about her life, decided to use Rachel’s death to make a point.
Chris, I can’t help but think that at some point you must have lost someone who was close to you. If that’s the case, put yourself in my shoes (or in the shoes of Rachel’s mother) and think about the consequences of your comments.
I’m not asking you to censor your political opinions — I’m certain that there are ways in which you can express your belief that there should be more equality in American society without mentioning Rachel by name.
Please, out of consideration for Rachel’s family remove this post before it hurts anyone else.
Brian
What purpose would removing the post from this blog serve? The Google search result will still remain, as well as the page Google has cached… The same for Yahoo!, which also indexed this site recently enough to pick up that story.
I would be willing to blank out the name, since you don’t want her mentioned specifically, but that also would not serve to prevent further people from finding the page through searches…
Chris,
I don’t know anything about the technical aspects of search engines.
Here’s what I’m trying to prevent from happening: Rachel’s mother does a google search for her daughter’s name two weeks from now and finds your blog. Given the nature of your original posting, surely you can understand why this is something that it would be best to avoid.
All I want is for this webpage not to appear when someone enters Rachel’s full name into a search engine. If this is not possible, I’d like you to remove the hurtful things you say about Rachel in the original posting.
In sum, my request is this: do whatever you can to reduce the likelihood that someone else who was close to Rachel stumbles across this blog.
Brian
Mourning,
I’m failing to see why you are taking someone’s random internet post so personally. My suggestion to you: learn that people use the internet to say whatever they please, accept it, and get over it.
Chris,
How could I not have taken your posting personally? Your original posting was a vicious personal attack on a friend I now mourn. I’m obviously not going to convince you to do anything about this by appealing to your decency so let me say this:
I found a very interesting posting on your website entitled ‘Why Do I Work Here Again?’ It was so interesting, in fact, that I printed off a copy. It would be easy enough for me to find out where you work in Greenville and mail a letter to your boss. Please take down the posting about Rachel.
Brian Barnes
Incase you didn’t notice, I didn’t post that, another reader did…
So when you don’t get your way you try blackmail? Is that what they’re teaching at Yale these days? When someone doesn’t agree with your moral values, you decide to lower yourself to their level, eh? A bit like the pot calling the kettle black, no?
BTW, sending a copy to my boss would keep me from having to come up with a polite way to say it in the speach I’ve been meaning to give him for the past 3 weeks. When you send it, let me know how you found out where I work, because I imagine it’d be much harder than you think.
As for the post, I was actually considering removing it until your comment just now. My only response after the attempt at blackmail is this:
GO FUCK YOURSELF
Chris,
If the post stays up until tomorrow, I’m putting the letter in the mail.
Brian
Brian,
When I first started reading this conversation between you and Chris, I did sympathize with you. Any shred of empathy I had, however, is now destroyed.
What you have threatened to do is low, immature, and despicable. Your actions are an insult to Rachel’s memory exponentially more so than Chris’ post.
From: service@paypal.com
To: cmeller@dacnomm.com
Subject: Receipt for your Payment
This email confirms that you sent $1.00 USD to brian.barnes@yale.edu.
— — -
For the postage Brian…
For some odd reason, it still nags at me that no one seems to be able to grasp the point of this entry. Perhaps I’ve been too busy trying to shut up the minority who is all broken up over this entry without reason, so I’ll just lay the entire thing out on the line in the crudest most basic elementary school-level language I can right here, right now:
This post had NOTHING to do with Rachel. Not a damn thing!
That’s right, absolutely ziltch. I honestly don’t give a shit about her. Not one damn bit. I never met her, she had no effect at all on my life, and it really wouldn’t have made any difference to me if she’d survived another 70 years or not (except to have prevented me from wasting an entire day writing rebuttals here).
Whether you can see it or not, this was a commentary on the state of American society as a whole. The fact that there are families that are well-off enough to send their child to Yale and not require that she work to help pay for tuition, gas, insurance, etc. and then families that are struggling to put food on the table and keep their 2 room house in the ghetto or that are actually living on the street is a sad statement about society in general.
There’s also the issue of the news coverage of this issue. If Rachel had instead been born to a single mother working 3 jobs and living in the ghetto, would the Houston Chronicle article have still been published at all? What are the changes of there having been multiple articles about it? I’d say they’re slim to ziltch.
Add to those two points the fact that she was studying music history at Yale, which I see as a total utterly useless degree. That’s my opinion, and you’re welcome to yours…
Whether you want to see or believe that this entry had nothing to with Rachel or not is your problem. I’ve flat out told you that it was not about her in the slightest, simply an example that spurred my attention to this issue. From there, it’s your own problem to deal with.
Chris,
The sad irony of this whole mess is that Rachel would have agreed with most of your points (all but the one you make about music history — but as you say this has nothing to do with Rachel herself). I just wish you’d made your points without using Rachel as a target in the process. If your last post had been your first post, I think we could have both saved a big chunk of our days.
Brian
It’s good to see that she didn’t represent the typical rich brat you’d expect her to be from all the media coverage. Her life has been “priviledged” to say the least, leading one to suspect a certain stereotype.
Again, I appologize for the confusion and any insults that may have been implied from my post. They certainly were not intended, and Rachel was only used as an example for starting off my post and serving as a real-world situation everyone could relate to.
Even though it is against my typical beliefs, in an effort to end this dispute, all occurrences of her last name have been removed from this page, as per the request in your email.
Good luck Brian, and may your trip to Houston help bring some closure to this incident.
Chris,
Thank you for removing Rachel’s last name. Let me say here what I said in my email — I’m sorry I threatened you earlier. It was unjustifiable and at any other time I’m confident I wouldn’t have done it. I appreciate your kind words and am glad we’ve found a way to end this stupid and painful dispute.
Brian