birds fly, buddies stay on the ground

I have no first-hand experience with the hunting of tiny birds, but I assume any "sportsman" engaged in its pursuit is supposed to wait until the intended target is in the air before blasting at it. Judging from a description of the damage he did to his friend's chest, face and innards, it looks like our SUV-riding vice-huntsman wasn't going to wait for his host's house quail to get more than five feet off the ground last Saturday. Although to be fair, as Barry reminds me, these little shooting-plantation quail are raised in cages and may not be able to fly very high when finally released as Republican targets.

It also probably wouldn't help the cute little critters one bit, or our good old boy's buddies either, if he had been drinking all afternoon. Why else do we suppose the Vice President was totally unavailable that day, even to talk to his [pretend] boss? It would also help to explain how Mr. Whittington might have looked like a Quail.

But hunting, even badly, and drinking, also even badly, are not crimes. I don't even think badly handling the bad consequences of bad hunting or bad drinking is a crime. Even if it does involve Dick Cheney, this is really not a major story, probably regardless of what we might still learn about it.

My real question is why, after six years of a very deliberate reign of fear, a politically-motivated war, the brutal murder of tens of thousands of innocent people and the corruption and near ruin of a great nation, it's a hunting accident which seems to have finally persuaded the media to begin to look serious about trying to hold this administration accountable.

The most likely answer is that what happened in south Texas seems perfectly-designed for the tabloid journalism into which our media has been tranformed. The only thing missing, at least so far, is sex.

[image from grousewing]