I don't know, I think either stance is reductive and objectifying. They aren't "monsters or "tragedies," they're people. Help should be available but not imposed.

But of course, that way lies things like the elimination of vice laws and that's a little too much freedom for this country.

Forgot stars. If he hadn't shot himself already he'd probably be considering it after this.

Well, I didn't mean to say that drug addicts should be interned in rehab clinics or anything. I think it's a hard sell to say that a Kurt Cobain-type is not tragic, though.

Mostly because between our broken healthcare system and rampant anti-intellectualism, the only course of action for addicts in most of the country is Alcoholics Anonymous and its various substance-specific offshoots because it's cheap, it's a way for the courts to push Jesus on people.

Aberdeen is one of the nastiest towns I've ever had the misfortune to visit. You literally get the "You ain't from 'round here, is you boy?"-vibe just popping into the gas station to get some smokes.

That said, I don't think it's bad that the town would want to put up some sort of acknowledgment somewhere, but that statue looks like utter shit. Probably got some Greener College freshmen to make it.

I've never been there when it wasn't sideways raining. One time I watched an ENTIRE TREE, branches, roots, everything, float down the river and out of sight in less than five minutes.

Aberdeen is undeniably the worst place to live in the United States, and I grew up in Centralia.

Perhaps worse is Hoquiam, its pleasant sister city.

I like how people are objecting to a celebration of the only contribution their town has ever made to anything.

Well, the other option was serial killer Billy Gohl.

WIKI IT. YOU WON'T REGRET IT.

Yeah, the people of Aberdeen have to remember, even if you don't care for Kurt Cobain, you work with what you get.

My hometown was known for three things: not celebrating Martin Luther King Day (with the subsequent KKK/ Matt Hale riots), being the central postal hub through which all those anthrax letters were routed, and being the one-time home of a somewhat obscure French WWI fighter ace. Guess which one we chose to push for tourism??

(we pushed the MLK thing, and we got national news coverage and a visit from Jesse Jackson out of it, SO IT WAS A GOOD CALL.)

This explains so much, EvilHomer

Evilhomer is working on a screenplay about his life growing up in Hitlerville.

the point is they are commemorating a person who hated them and who, as a community, they treated like shit.