Sometimes when a significant public figure dies, even, perhaps especially, when that death comes as no surprise and may, indeed, be considered some form of release there is a natural tendency to wonder if the blanket media coverage that invariably follows is altogether appropriate or even seemly. Is it not all too much? A man is merely a man; a woman merely a woman.
Sometimes too, it is natural to react to the endless parade of tributes and wonder how genuine they really are. Is there not something vainglorious about them? Is there not something a little ridiculous about all these attempts to cling to the coat-tails of greatness?
Perhaps sometimes there is. But not tonight.
For more than two hours now I have been watching the coverage of the news of Nelson Mandela’s death. For more than two hours I have watched my Twitter and Facebook feeds devoted to a single subject as never before. And none of it feels too much at all. I want to be reminded of Mandela’s greatest or most generous or most poignant remarks. I want to see how tomorrow’s newspapers will treat his passing. A lot is talked about social media and most of it is rot but this is a moment, a rare moment, in which it makes the world seem a smaller, warmer, place. A better place as well.
So the cumulative effect has been heartening, even moving. What might in other circumstances seem me-too vaingloriousness is, tonight, better understood as a demonstration of how one man – yes, a mere man but not just that either – can touch and inspire millions of people. And there is something touching about this. Something wondrous about how Mandela’s death, no great shock though it was, has prompted such an outpouring of feeling.
We lapse into cynicism all too easily and sometimes cynicism is an appropriate response to the daily degradations of ordinary politics.
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