Wanted: A Victim Who Won't Talk Back

What ground-breaking story has been occupying the collective attention of the media for the last week, trumpeted from the front page of dailys, broadcast on the evening news and scattered across news sites?

Was it Iran's accelerating race towards a nuclear arsenal? Hamas' takeover of the Palestinian Authority? Worldwide cartoon protests by Muslims which has now killed over a dozen people including children?

Perish the thought. The media has little patience for such trivialties. The lead news story continues to be that the Vice-President accidentally shot a man with birdshot in a hunting accident.

The media which had days earlier been so starved for things to blame Bush for that they were accusing him of killing polar bears (actual headline, Polar Bears Reveal Shame of Bush Administration) gleefully searched through their closets for anything Tartan and took to wandering the woods doing news broadcasts from places they'd never been like a forest, a ditch and Texas.

Faster than Superman during rush hour on Krypton the media gathered what little they knew about hunting, hunters and Texas into a small bundle and rushed off to make this the big story. When the injured hunter lay in the hospital, more attention was paid to his condition than has been paid to that of many world leaders. When he suffered a heart attack, more of the news media seemed to care for his health than that of their own children.

Then the 'man- who- would- not- be- Cindy- Sheehan' got out of bed and read a statement confused and embarassed at all the attention saying he didn't blame the Vice President, that hunting accidents happen and that he wished the whole thing would just go away.

Immediately he went from being the victim of the Vice President's homicidal bloodlust to being described as a 'Republican Donor.' Where previously the media had been willing to let his Republican donations go when they thought he might die or at least grumble, now they used that to top their headlines. To normal people it seems a bit confusing as to why stories about a man accidentally shot should describe him as a Republican Donor, but it pays to remember that Republican Donors, like Settlers describes a subhuman class as far as Liberal reporters are concerned.

To describe a man as a 'Republican Donor' is to state that he is not a human being and shooting him isn't a very terrible thing after all. It also to the media's way of thinking explains why he wasn't prepeared to do what they wanted him to, which was to metamorphose into Cindy Sheehan wandering the world praying at plastic tombstones and carrying a slice of onion in her pocket to produce instant tears for the cameras; but instead behaved with dignity and class. Had he made a spectacle of himself for the evening news, they might have forgiven him his Republican donations but failing to do so, they damned him with the worst epithet they knew which is certain to start a bloody hairpulling match any day in Berkeley or Tribeca. A Republican Donor.

Now with an uncooperative victim and an accident that most people thought was an accident, particularly people who had actually been hunting once in their lives or at least knew the difference between birdshot and an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile; the media like a bulldog with his teeth in the postman's leg were still determined to blindly keep reporting the story. By now they no longer know exactly what the story is about or what to do with it but news producers are tenacious creatures and like bulldogs they hang on in there certain that if they chew long and hard enough, some blood will spurt somewhere.

Indeed the bulldog legacy is the legacy of the Democratic opposition to Bush. An opposition that had long since lost any remnant of reason or coherence and has consisted of grabbing hold and biting down hard certain that determination will finally yield blood. And so the media disgrace continues while nations and organizations determined to turn as many Americans as they can into piles of corpses go about their plans, the media broadcasts Day 94 of the Cheney Shootout.

And so it goes.