Lemme try again
Ever heard the expression, "One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic"? We couldn't take the legitimate grief we feel for a single death and multiply it by a million. We wouldn't be able to function. With modern communication, there is more bad news available to us than we can possibly deal with.
So how do we cope? We joke. We laugh at the misfortune of others. I can't cry every time someone contracts a disease. I can't grieve every time someone dies. What I can do is make a joke about the ones I don't know, focus on the trivial humorous details, rather than the huge glaring reality of their pain.
Until it's someone I know. Then it's not funny. To me. That doesn't make everyone else suddenly bastards ... at least no more than they were when it was someone else affected.
