Another feeding frenzy?

I feel like hurling chunks, and not just because of the chemo.

Seeing sharks in a feeding frenzy is sick-making. I lived in St. Petersburg, Florida, for five minutes. I had a friend who owned a boat, and at times we would go out to the mouth of the Pinellas River and shoot sharks. We’d chum them with beer and various gatherings from the butcher shop of the local grocery store, then load them with various caliber rounds from a variety of semi-automatic and highly-accurate [scope-sighted] weapons. Bill W.--…a big, burly guy, used to laugh manically and empty entire 30-round clips into the suckers. Then he would drag them aboard, over the gun’ales, while we reloaded and drank more chumming beer.

Had I known that sharks have commercial value, I, too, would have been dragging them aboard the boat. Sharks are at least cleaner and easier to catch than reporters who work the DC beat.

Lawyers have commercial value. Even reporters have commercial value; at least to their syndicates. Shooting victims have great value to lawyers; anyone who is shot by a real gun has great value to a litigator who can assign fault for the fate of the injured party to a corporate manufacturer of firearms. Forget the fact that they might have been a felon in the commission of same…

Shooting victims have great value to their next of kin, if they don’t survive the incident. See above about lawyers. The celebrity of a shooting victim enhances the person’s value to the lawyer involved, and the beat goes on…

Ah, but I digress. A big-time lawyer, gunned down by the vice-president of the United States, is, as they say, priceless.

This was like the definition of comedy. A very proper gentleman, arriving at very proper black-tie affair, starts down a flight of stairs. At the top of the stairs, he slips on a banana peel [insert cliché here] and starts to fall. The sight of such a proper gentleman falling unceremoniously onto his ass is funny, as pomposity deserves comeuppance. The further down the stairs he falls into the ballroom, the louder the laughter becomes.

When he finally fetches up at the bottom of the stairs, his neck is broken. The laughter stops. When did it cease to be humorous?

I know a few lawyers. Mr. Whittington is not among them. He is in my prayers personally. It ain’t funny. Getting shot never is. The possibility for lawyer jokes is endless, but…

I don’t hunt. I don’t begrudge this privilege to others, on some vague politically correct obscure grounds, I just don’t do it. Not a sport. Maybe if the rabbits can shoot back. Anyone who was forced to read the classic “The Most Dangerous Game” in high school will understand a loss of taste for blood sport. I’d shoot Bambi for food if the kids needed it, but that’s a whole ‘nother scenario. They know where the grocery store, and its meat counter, is located.

The vice-president of the United Sates shot someone in the face the other day, in what amounts to a hunting accident. It is a horribly personal incident. There is a wonderfully succinct bumpersticker that sums it up: “S*** happens”.

Playing around in the woods with firearms increases this maxim exponentially.

At the age of 14, while hunting with my father and my 14-year-old cousin, I squeezed the trigger of a 1898 Mauser to see if it was loaded. The accidental discharge barely missed my dad and cousin Dick. Like some other moments that I never forgot, that sticks. The dried grass and pines are what recall the incident; the landscape of the event.

I have since received some shooting lessons that, like riding a bicycle, do not escape memory. Despite your “one shot, one kill” creed, make sure of the background, and watch those snap shots. In the field, with a loaded weapon, you never know…

Forget killing Bambi for bloodsport. This isn’t about some birds that PETA might consider more vital than an aborted human baby. This isn’t about a Golden Age lawyer whom some people might consider fair game.

If I needed an example of [Im]Pure Politics for a classroom of high schoolers, this is it.

I come from a subsect of politically incorrect, gun-owning southern folks. Alvin York would respect our respect for life. We know how to shoot.

I heard a press conference the other morning. “What did the vice-president know, and why didn’t he..?”

The vice-president knows his target wasn’t clear, and he capped a guy in the face. I don’t care whose fault it was. When you wander into the woods with loaded weapons, stuff may happen. Everyone may know the rules of engagement, but stuff happens. That's part of the kick of hunting.

So, we impeach the second-in-command, make speeches about “the culture of corruption”, and position ourselves for the abortive attempt to regain liberal sway over the direction of America in 2008? I fall in with Pink Floyd, and ‘leave them kids alone.” What a crock of nothing! Check that last; what a crock of desperation.

Mr. Cheney’s unfortunate incident involving Mr. Whittington is a personal matter. My first reaction, as a citizen, was to speculate how ludicrous Ted Kennedy will look trying to accuse anyone of manslaughter, assault, diving for his pants while others drown, or any other charge some over-valued lawyer can concoct. The feeding frenzy of the liberal, agenda-driven press is an indictment beyond words. They are prey to the Kennedy curse, and Ted’s Da Man; the last voice of a dying dynasty that cursed America for nearly a century.

The DC press corps, and their respective syndicates, has added themselves to this Hall of Shame. Sean Hannity, whom I used to call to the phone and beleaguer when he worked local Atlanta radio, has it right when he addresses the liberal Democrats at large: “Keep it up! I love it! Every time you take a position, we win!”

Ditto.