More on the Hunting Accident

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I didn't really get the excitement and continuous talk about Cheney's hunting accident. It seemed like a very bad thing for the poor victim and just more proof of how the life of the rich differs from ours: they go hunting for caged birds pretty much out of an SUV and then have a nice meal afterwards, except for the one who got hunted, too.

But I finally realized (boy, I'm slow today!) that the whole episode serves as an admirable parable of this administration: Picking targets that they think are easy (tame birds in this case), then finding out that the whole thing turned into a disaster (shooting yourself or someone on your side), then exhibiting a certain callousness about the whole thing (going to have the meal as planned) and then trying to keep everything a secret.

It sounds like attacking Iraq, being over-confident about the outcome without any actual evidence, making a complete mess of it, not caring about the suffering that was caused and then trying to make sure that nobody has pictures of the coffins.

It even sounds a little like the whole war on terror which has managed to turn the Middle East into a lot of actual or potential theocracies, all united in their hatred of America and the West. This is bad news for all of us and bad news for the women in those theocracies. Because now feminism is seen as yet another Western plot.

Getting back to the hunting incident, a fairer fight would have been Dick Cheney, unarmed, against one quail, unarmed, in a pit. I'd root for the quail...