Blaming the Victim

Oh my God.

Harry Whittington, the man Dick Cheney shot last weekend, has apologized, apparently for getting in the way of the VP's gun. He's sorry for everything the VP and his family have had to go through on account of his carelessness.

Do you understand this? Mr. Whittington got a face full of buckshot, and he's apologizing. Yeah, poor Dick Cheney.

John Kerry is a hunting enthusiast, too. Can you imagine what the Republican reaction would be if he got careless and shot someone by accident? Do you think for one minute that the "President" would be satisfied with anything short of flaying him alive? (Notice, by the way, that Senator Kerry's hunting partner is still on two feet.)

Oh well, at least this incident demonstrates in the clearest possible fashion where Republican sympathies lie; with those in power, always always always.

Benshlomo says, Sometimes victims are actually victims.

Accidents Will Happen

As a determined enemy of this administration, I've been trying to find some way of using Dick Cheney's hunting accident as a means to tear down the Bush presidency - to say that it indicates how dangerous this presidential team is, or how little it cares about safety, or what have you.

Can't do it. It was an accident. I even know a man who was the victim of a similar accident some years ago.

The way the administration announced the thing, on the other hand, is just the opportunity I was looking for.

Get this - Cheney accidentally shoots another hunter on Saturday evening. (That the victim is a prominent Texas Republican and Bush donor is a nice irony.) No one apparently even discusses informing the public until Sunday morning, and no one actually tells the press until some 24 hours after the accident, when the owners of the ranch where the shooting took place talk about it to a newspaper in Corpus Christi.

Nothing necessarily untoward, so far, but then everyone reassures us about the reason for the delay. Why did it take so long? Because everyone in the vicinity was so concerned about getting the injured man to the hospital, and didn't want to waste energy discussing it with the press.

Let's think about this for a minute. According to MSNBC, the ranch where all of this happened covers about 50,000 acres and has been in the same family for over 100 years. Do you believe that Dick Cheney and the guy he shot were the only hunters on the premises this weekend? I didn't think so.

Do you believe there was no one on the site except those two hunters and a couple of family members? I didn't think so.

Do you believe that everyone present at a 50,000 acre ranch during hunting season, at a time when the Vice President of the United States and God knows how many Secret Service agents were there, had to drop whatever they were doing and personally take care of an injured man until they could get him to a doctor? I didn't think so.

So, to sum up, do you believe that it needed everyone on the premises to get this guy to the hospital? That no one could be spared to tell the American people about an accident involving the second highest officeholder in the Executive Branch? No? Me neither.

Call me a cynic, but I suspect that Cheney and his bunch spent the time planning how to spin the incident. And doing a pretty poor job at that.

Even if I'm wrong, though, I still think the Bush Administration machine blew this one up, and as usual it's spending all its energy trying to make itself look good.

Benshlomo says, Looks like Dick Cheney shot his buddy in the face and himself in the foot.

Sense of Proportion

Here is a well-reasoned, and therefore frightening, comment on the recent hoo-ha regarding those cartoons of Muhammad published in Europe lately.

I have little to add, except for one thing. The writers, Roberta Seid and Roz Rothstein, rightly point out the evident attitude among those Muslims who riot over cartoons that only Islam is to be treated with any respect at all, whereas all other faiths may be not only ridiculed, but attacked without mercy. Is anyone surprised at this?


Granted that each religion's followers believe, pretty much by definition, that their faith is correct and all other incorrect. I, for example, believe that Christianity and Islam are both mistaken about the true nature of God and the Universe, and that Judaism has it right. At various times in history, pretty nearly every religion's followers have tried to force their world view on everyone they could get their hands on while reacting with fury at any such attempt by anyone else; indeed, it's an unfortunate characteristic of human nature that we can dish it out but can't take it.

So this attitude on the part of the Muslims is simply par for the course; after all, from their point of view, ridicule of other faiths is simply ridicule of a silly or dangerous falsehood, whereas ridicule of Islam is a profound insult to the one true God. The difference, as I hope I don't need to point out, is that in the 21st century most religious groups have gotten past the necessity of spilling blood when their beliefs are denied. That is, people still kill each other over genuine religious differences, but not over cartoons.

So, to my Muslim bretheren who indulge in this kind of display, I ask this question: I can understand getting upset if someone says your faith is untrue, but how do you expect to be taken seriously when you can't even hold your mud over a cartoon?


Benshlomo says, Keep your hands to yourself.

Sympathy for the Jackoff?

David Klinghoffer published this attempt at a defense of Jack Abramoff in the Los Angeles Jewish Journal last week.

Now, as I believe I've made clear before, I think Abram Jackoff is a terrible blot on the Jewish community in more ways than I could ever count, so I wrote this response:

It's all very well for Klinghoffer to quote Torah law in assessing Jewish anger towards Jack Abramoff, but he should at least get his facts straight. The rabbis teach that a unanimous verdict demands reconsideration, not outright dismissal, and then only in capital cases. Neither death nor dismissal applies here.

By all means let's give Abramoff the benefit of the doubt, acknowledging his generosity and repentance. Let's not, however, simply forget what he did, which involved more than just fraud. He undermined American democracy at a time when we are allegedly spreading it worldwide, while proclaiming his devotion to Jewish ethics.


To quote another Torah law, we leave an executed criminal's body hanging until sundown, then respectfully remove it. Until then it remains in plain sight so that all may see and be afraid to sin.

In view of that principle, it's a little early for the kind of instantaneous forgiveness that Klinghoffer wants, particularly considering Abramoff's utter failure to correct himself until caught.

You better believe that sort of hypocrisy is a desecration of God's name. Praise Abramoff if you must, but cut the breast-beating about how the Jewish community abandoned him. He abandoned it long ago.

Benshlomo says, He that will not follow the law in good times may not excuse himself by it in bad times.

Great Women of History

I'm extremely fond of people who don't strut - those who tell the truth about themselves, the good and the less good. So let's commemorate the birthday today of Nell Gwynne (1650-1687), mistress of Charles II of England.



And why should we pay any attention to this woman? Here's one of my favorite stories, coming to you from the "It's good to be the king" department:

Charles II had several mistresses, which was pretty common for royalty at the time - come to think of it, it's pretty common for royalty now - and he didn't discriminate. He took on Catholics, Protestants, maids and nobles.

One day Nell Gwynne was riding through Oxford in her carriage, and a crowd of people mistook her for Louise de Kerouaille, another royal mistress and a very unpopular Catholic. They started shouting opprobrious epithets; it looked like a riot in the making. Ms. Gwynne quickly realized what the problem was, stuck her head out the window, and said something like "Pray, good people, be civil. I am the Protestant whore."

They loved it, and an ugly scene was averted.

Benshlomo says, There's nothing like calling a spade a spade.

Villains and Thieves

Let's see now. Over the last couple of days...


Ken Lay and Jeff Skillings began their trial for fraud and whatnot in the Enron matter. Remember that these are the guys who, according to their own chief accountant, announced rosy earnings when they knew perfectly well that their company was in the tank. They thereby cleaned out their employees' pension fund and God knows what else.


Sam Alito took the oath of office as the newest Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. This guy got a total pass from the Senate, despite endless unanswered questions about his evident totalitarian ideas, starting with his membership in an alumni organization that advocated barring minority enrollment at Princeton as much as possible. Now we've got a court that's liable to give the government more power to tap our phones, read our emails, and throw us in the slammer than any genuine democracy ever dreamed of.

And George W. "Prez" Bush delivered a State of the Union address containing absolutely nothing we haven't heard before. Even his announcement that the U.S. is addicted to foreign oil first emerged no later than the Jimmy Carter administration thirty years ago, and you know that back then the Bush family wanted nothing to do with alternative energy sources.



And to top it all off, he began his remarks with a tribute to Coretta Scott King, who worked all her life (as, of course, did her late husband) advocating an idea of the United States that most certainly turns George W.'s stomach in his private moments.

Benshlomo says, Skin 'em.