There's this post on Facebook comparing Nelson Mandela and Paul Walker that everyone is sharing. Pretty ridiculous thing to do.

It's interesting, though. Most of the comments fell into two camps, either saying yes, Mandela was more important, saying Paul Walker was just as good, or the comments saying that Paul Walker was a person too, and should be mourned because he had a family. There were some posts condemning Maandela for his political views and terrorism.

So...At the the end of the day... We as a society venerate social leaders with possibly questionable backgrounds (who nonetheless had a massive impact on the world. And if you think the end of apartheid only affected South Africa, you're not paying attention.)

And actors (who are charitable, but make really stupid, frankly selfish decisions. I have a hard time calling it a tragedy, when it was a pretty much foregone conclusion. Hello, when you do things to risk your life with no regard for how your family will feel, or how the family of the guy who died with you will feel, or the possibility that you could have killed a bystander, or more than one, I can't say I'm no a little relieved that the accident wasn't worse.

It's just that I'm a little fired up. People keep calling Paul Walker a great man. As in better by a large margin than good. Hmm. From all the arguments I've heard, his major accomplishment was funding charity. Now I would have to research his giving strategy to know if this is even on my map of good things to do. If he was giving a large percentage of his movie contract money to you know, starving abused foster children, that's one thing. But if we're calling everyone who gives to charity "Great" that qualifies my ex-boyfriend, who was probably the most actively malicious person I've ever met.

So, to sum up. We love terrorist humanitarians and charitable actors and my ex-boyfriend. They are/were all Great men. In fact my ex most of all, because in a lot of ways, he was both. We have pretty low standards of Greatness in most cases.