A Spanish bullfighter was gored to death by the bull he was fighting yesterday — and it was witnessed by millions on live television. Do you, like me, have trouble lamenting a death in this situation?
Whatever reverence we have for human life, it's mitigated somewhat when the deceased was engaging in "daredevil" activities, seeking a thrill and/or paycheck by risking death. If you risk death, you're accepting that every now and then, what you're doing is going to lead directly to your demise. It's in a whole different category when someone dies as a result of a choice as opposed to illness or an accident or an unpredictable act of violence. Bullfighting is in a subset of that category because even when it goes well for the human, it never ends well for the bull and turns that bull's death into a public, inhumane spectacle.
Bullfighting is on a long list of activities or practices that some people enjoy but I cannot for the life of me understand why. Most of them I can easily ignore but bullfighting has long troubled me…as I would hope it troubles you. One of the things I don't like about it is that on those rare occasions when a matador (or a toreador of whatever they're called) is killed or injured, there's a moment when a part of me that I don't like very much thinks, "Good!"