Public Rewards

(For those of you who aren’t aware, I live in Tucson, AZ, where there was a shooting earlier this year)

Our society is weird in terms of how we publicly rewarding people.

You’ll probably want to avoid the Oracle/Calle Concordia area later today, as they’re dedicating a statue to Christina Taylor Green at the park there and it’ll be a traffic mess.

Here’s where this rubs me weird – if you think about it, in all the accounts of the shooting she did nothing other than get shot.

Nobody is dedicating anything, that I know of, to anyone who attempted any heroic or self sacrificing actions in the shootings. There are plenty of examples – Judge John Roll jumped in front of someone else at the loss of his life, or the other people who tried to take down Loughner. Heck, Giffords aide who helped keep her alive did more.

The takeaway I have from this whole thing is that if you’re young, cute, innocent, and precocious, you get singled out and statues are put up for you. If you actually do something heroic, not so much.