right to die...onstage??

Sorry about the obscure link, but I saw this the other day and didn't have time to blog about it. (I am very very very busy with that dreaded "analysis memo" ... the most important thing you do in law school and you have to do in your first semeseter!)

so this band thinks that they can bring attention to the right to die by having a terminally ill person commit suicide during the concert.

okay. even if I wholeheartedly support the right to die, I certainly wouldn't consider committing suicide as a stage prank one of the acceptable ways of dying with dignity.

but, I guess in the end it doesn't matter because the whole thing was a publicity stunt to begin with. the band has gotten more press from the outrage expressed by anyone with any sense of humanity or compassion than they ever would have if they just pulled of the suicide stunt with no complaints.

what makes me outraged is not the suicide per se, but the way in which the band willing to take advantage of the right to die issue for their own gain.

they obviously could care less that the issue with the right to die is not the suicide, but the the right of a terminally ill person to die with dignity.

anyway. I would hate to spill any more ink over such idiotic behavior, but what really worries me is that word has it that they are planning to do the suicide trick anyway, but in a secret location.

anyone willing to bet there is a 1st degree murder rap coming down the pike???

here's my thinking. A Florida law already makes assisting in a suicide manslaughter. But if the band were to not only assisting, but actively soliciting the suicide, it seems to me to show a sense of depravity that seems aggravated enough to cross the line to a charge of murder -- especially if the band goes ahead, in light of the specific city prohibition, and holds the concert in a secret location and the suicide happens.

I don't know what penalty the city ordinance entails, the article only says it is "illegal." Let's hope the penalty is murder because it should be.

UPDATE: the concert and webcast didn't happen.

it may be that they held the concert in secret, but their server froze up when all this traffic hit it. the band says they didn't know until after the concert that there were technical problems.

I wonder what they did with the body?????