Springtime for the Press Corps

The MSM and the late night humor folks are having a great time with the Cheney shooting incident. One would exepect it, and they are behaving exactly as would be expected. No need to go back on a littany of press "accidents", but let's just go short term and think about "12 Miners Safe" ... when of course it was 1 miner that was barely alive, and 12 that were dead. Infallibility is something that we are not going to be seeing from our MSM, nor of course from any of us. The usual response is rapid forgiveness, since we know our own feet of clay.

The victim in this case is still in the hosptial, had a heart attack induced by the incident ... I'm thinking the humor might be less if he wasn't a Republican too? We all know many hate Cheney and the term in German says it best; schadenfruede - malicious enjoyment from the suffering of another. It is very human, but not many amoung us really look at it as something that is less than evil in itself, EXCEPT in the case where the person that we are feeling it about has been judged to be less than human and worthy of no positive regard at all ... Hitler, Bin Ladin, Saddam ... and now we see clearly from the left, Cheney.

Schadenfrude is something we all understand, usually ascribe to our darker selves, and enjoy it only sparing and somewhat in private, EXCEPT with the exception above (and even then we understand the darkness). We now see that a lot of people have gorged themselves on enough MSM bile to actually categorize the VP of the USA as someone who one can share publicly a normally ugly human emotion. It is often the smaller things that let us see inside the souls of those around us more clearly.

The defense of Clinton was a larger, but similar clarity kind of example. I've already heard the obvious comparison, but even that tells more about the speaker than they intend. "Well, you conservatives took a lot of joy in Clinton and Monica, that is no different". Such a statement tells one that logical argument is of no use with such a person, because consistency CLEARLY is not an issue. Are we to believe that human males have no more control over their sexual impulses than someone has over a split-second decision in a hunting situation? Apparently yes, but in that case there is very little in human existence that would be under our control, which would tend to meet the liberal model pretty well I suppose. We are all here stumbling and bumbling about with absolutely no control or responsiblity for anything ... unless we are Republicans, in which case we are not only responsible, but constantly doing the wrong thing with evil intent (see "consistency is not an issue").

As Leno said, neither Clinton's or Cheney's aim was very good, but that is about the only similarity. Dick Cheney was responsible for an accident. There are no humans walking around of an age anywhere close the the VPs that haven't been responsible for accidents of similar sorts of parameters, though hopefully not of severity. Of course, there are many that are responsible for accidents of much worse severity, and in general as humans we realize our failings and are quite forgiving of even cases that are quite egregious in overlooking safety, since we well understand "there but for the grace of God ...".

Clinton made a conscious choice, not once, but many times. If he can't be held responsible for that choice, then we would need to take every sex law off the books, and every promise made in marriage off the books and mark it all down as "beyond human control". (along with essentially the whole concept of "self control" or "personal responsibility") While there were certainly plenty of jokes that arose after the ludicris defense attempts about "what is is", very few conservatives "enjoyed" the travails of Clinton. They despised his chosen behavior in the White House and hated what it said about the country that even such blatant case of disrespect for the Presidency and the laws of the land could not be removed from office. Most of the same folks who defended Clinton (and often still do) are now wallowing in schadenfruede for Cheney.

This story is essentially no story at all beyond a basic report, but the response of the press and a number of people in the public is the story. It lets us see that the souls of a lot of our fellow citizens have become so corrupted that they now display their dark side with pride and joy. Springtime indeed, Sig Heil! Enjoyment of the dark side is far from a new device to control the unsuspecting masses.