John Curley decries the ‘hashtag mentality’ to terrorist attacks

There’s debate as to how best show appreciation and support for the people of Paris.

For some, it’s changing their Facebook photo to a Paris flag filter or crafting a flash-mob re-gumming tribute of the Eiffel Tower. For others, such easy and insignificant offerings are lazy and a root of the problem in the first place, when people should instead be focusing on education and actual assistance.

It’s an issue that splits KIRO Radio’s John and Curley in a surprising way.

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John Curley: I’m so sick of lighting up things red, white and blue. And I’m tired of the candles and tired of all that crap. It bothers me. Immediately we go into cry-baby mode.

Tom Tangney: Cry baby? No, it’s sympathy. It shows solidarity.

JC: It’s hollow, Tom.

TT: How did you feel after 9/11 when the French responded to us? Didn’t you think it was positive, generous?

JC: Yes, it was wonderful Sept. 11, 2001. Je suis Charlie, We are all Charlie. Yeah, for about a week. But I’m just saying, Tom, now it’s hollowed out. It’s the same thing as piles of stuffed animals around roadsides where kids have been shot. To me, all the symbolism has fallen in and collapsed on itself. Oh, let’s light up CenturyLink Field, let’s have someone come out with an American Flag. To me, it just rings, at this point, nothing more than symbolism and that’s it.

TT: I think that you’re underestimating the power of symbolism. At least for a moment there seems to be a unanimity of spirit. I don’t think that’s anything to condemn.

JC: But you have to agree, at some point, it becomes empty.

TT: At some point, maybe two weeks from now.

JC: Well, I’m there … It’s the hashtag-menality in which we respond to things. We’re sitting there and all of the sudden, #peaceandlove, #parislove. It’s the hashtag, the fact that it’s so simple, so easy to light things up, that then it loses any sort of value.

TT: I thought the French flag waiving on top of the Space Needle was a pretty cool effect and I think that’s fine. I understand your cynicism, John, but I still I think we ought to at least acknowledge, temporarily, that kind of emotion. It would be like, how would you feel if somebody you knew had somebody die in their family? You’re sympathetic. That doesn’t mean that it’s going to change your life.

Curley said Americans didn’t have this same reaction when terrorists blew up a Russian airplane, killing hundreds, or during the bombing in Beirut two days before Paris.

JC: But we determine oh, because the French are like us and they sit in cafes and they go to concerts and they’re at soccer games, we relate to them so let’s light stuff up for them. We don’t do things for other people because we have determined that some lives have more value than other lives.

TT: You sound a lot like the Black Lives Matter people.