'Spiderman' gets the thumbs down for safety stupidity

Sometimes I am just annoyed when I hear the news, such as recent coverage of the "French Spiderman" in New York City. Robert Alain scaled the New York Times skyscraper... with NO safety line! Apparently, the man was trying to bring attention to global warming. (How wall scaling is connected to that cause, I'm still trying to figure out.) But what really upset me was how many news commentators were in respectful awe of his feat; I heard more than one media person declare with gusto, “He didn’t even have any safety equipment on!"

This pervasive "macho" attitude about taking serious and unnecessary risk with one's personal wellbeing drives me crazy. It builds barriers to safer environments; it undoes all the good work around the whole "be smart, be safe" movement. The media plays right into this culture of machoism; heck, sometimes news people don't even take their own personal safety seriously!

Good role models for our kids?

My four-year-old was in the car with me when the radio broadcast about Robert Alain's antics came on; after about the 10^th time we heard it, she said, “I can’t believe Spiderman was climbing a building and my brother didn’t see him - that would have been so cool! Spiderman is never afraid of falling.” I felt like telling her that "Spiderman" should have been afraid - but I didn’t want to spoil her child-like innocence. 

Later when I got home and did a bit of research on the wall-climbing lunatic (he's pulled the stunt around the world), I found out that, according to his website, he has vertigo and is 60 percent disabled (whatever that means). If you want to be crazy and climb the face of a building with no safety equipment on, I guess that’s your prerogative – but I can’t stand it when the media hypes someone’s unsafe idea into some kind of heroism. 

This is exactly the kind of attitude that...

• Stops the teenager working at the deli from putting the lock-out system on the meat slicer
• Encourages construction workers to fail to 'tie off' on roof jobs
• Causes manufacturing companies to take short-cuts to save money
• Validates safety budgets as the first to be slashed at companies.

I am so glad that 'Spiderman" Alain got arrested, but I would be even happier if the people reporting this incident had stuck to calling him what he is - a very stupid man.