Why should I care about Barbaro?

Yesterday, I received the following email from CNN Breaking News:

-- The Associated Press reports Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro was euthanized this morning, according to one of the horse's co-owners.

This is breaking news? A horse died and I'm supposed to care? Sure, he was a famous horse. Some people won a lot of money off him and some people lost a lot of money when he publicly broke his leg. But "breaking news?"

I was bothered by it (by the fact of the "importance" of it) but I was going to leave it alone, until Jane Smiley wrote about his death for the Washington Post. Smiley writes,

Yes, to those who don't care about horses, terrible things are happening all over the world these days, and they demand from many people an unprecedented level of endurance, but we horse lovers say: This, too? That this beautiful and innocent animal should also die?

Yes, Jane this animal too should die. Any other horse would have been put down directly following the Preakness, but people seem to care. I find it a little more startling that some estimated 8000 cattle have died in the Colorado snows of the last several weeks. Barbaro was a celebrity, a horse, but a celebrity still. And I really have about as much interest in his death as I do in Britney Spears crotch shots.