james kim, rip

Like many people in my office, I've been obsessively checking in on the James Kim story. Even though I didn't know him at all aside from the fact that he taped a few mp3 player reviews for CNet, I cried when I found out that he was found dead. It seems to me such a cruel way to die - alone, freezing to death, not knowing if his wife and children were safe and alive. I had been really rooting for a miracle. I can't imagine what Kati Kim must be going through.

At the same time, I'm a little astonished at some of the callous comments that are floating around the Internet, about the mistakes the Kims made, about how city people are ignorant and that's what you get, etc. The man is DEAD; why pile on more cruelty? Even the SF Chronicle posted a pointed editorial about how we shouldn't second-guess James Kim's decisions - they'd been waiting a week already, burned all their tires, eaten all their food, and were worried about keeping the kids alive and healthy. I mean, really, you can't know what you're going to do in those sorts of situations until you're actually in them.

Is there something about the Internet that makes people particularly open to being mean-spirited in the name of "honesty"? I remember when I wrote a short post about how I cried after Rachel Corrie's death, and some asshole wrote a comment in my guestbook about how she smelled and how she deserved to die. That was nothing, though, compared to all the viciousness directed at her by other right-wingers who thought she deserved to die merely by going to the Middle East. Why are people like that? Is there some sort of short-circuit in the empathy part of their brains? I don't want to know that these people exist.

NoGoodForMe mentions that Susie Ghahremani is organizing a gift basket for Kati Kim and her daughters.
Monetary donations to the family can be made here. (The Kim family had to fund some of the helicopters and food drops out of their own pocket.)