Empathy Isn't Another Word For Narcissism

Meagan McArdle:

Yesterday, I came across this link to an absolutely heartbreaking photo series about an HIV-positive drug addict who the photographer found in a shelter, and then followed for 18 years.  Like Laura, I shamelessly cried at the images.  Then I noticed that the woman in them was ten months younger than I am.  By 2004 she looked like an old woman.  Her body and her life were ravaged by her infection; she died without reaching her 37th birthday.

It doesn't make it any sadder that she was my age, of course, but it does make it seem more real to me

There ya go. It's not sadder but the fact that the doomed drug addict is like her makes it more real; imagine McArdle's response if the drug addict would have been a 90 year old transvestite. It's almost as if she is proud of being so short sighted she can't see past her mirror.