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We Said "Jump!"

"Polite" Seattle Shows Its True Colors

by Dan Savage

That bit of mawkishness opens Seattle Post-Intelligencer metro columnist Candy Hatcher's column on the suicidal woman who disrupted rush-hour traffic for three hours on August 28 by threatening to jump from the Ship Canal Bridge. For someone who only recently arrived in Seattle (from Florida), Hatcher uses "we" pretty freely--which is her right. She lives here, after all. But while Hatcher may live in Seattle, it's clear from the rest of the column that Hatcher hasn't been paying attention to Seattle.

"Seattle, the place that has such tolerance for protesters who disrupt the city on purpose," Hatcher goes on, "had no tolerance for an individual who disrupted traffic with a cry for help.... I might have expected this in another city.... But in Seattle? A city recognized nationally for being polite?"

Polite? Seattle? Hello, Candy: WTO, Mardi Gras, the assault on Paul Schell, Mark Sidran's assaults on the homeless--Seattle has received national recognition for a lot of things lately, but civic politeness isn't one of them. Seattle is nationally recognized for tear gas, storm troopers, canceled New Year's Eve celebrations, physical assaults on the mayor, and Giuliani wannabes. And now we're the City That Said "Jump!" Politeness went out around here about the same time Elvis was popping pills at the World's Fair.

Finally, a word or two in defense of the folks who yelled "jump": Someone who wants to commit suicide in peace and quiet gets in the tub, opens a vein, and bleeds to death in serene privacy. But someone who threatens to kill themselves in front of a captive audience--someone who stands on the side of a bridge at rush hour, for example--is seeking attention. The grand gesture that is a public suicide threat transforms a private life-and-death decision into a matter of public debate. By choosing to jump from a bridge at rush hour, the jumper showed that she wanted to hear what the city had to say. She craved feedback.

And she got it. Considering the hostility and violence that have enlivened Seattle's civic discourse over the last few years, it should surprise no one--not the jumper, and certainly not the metro columnist--that the feedback was negative.

savage@thestranger.com