Shot-in-freund

The press has been missing the big story in the Vice President's "peppering" of his friend. It's not the delay in reporting possibly allowing time for any alcohol bloodstream evidence to dissipate. It's not the prima facie negligent breach of hunting protocol. It's not Whittington's heart attack caused by a vice-presidential pellet. It's not the permanently, and taxpayer-expensively, proximate medical roustabouts that trail after the VP like punished guardian angels (who knew?). It's not even the garish obviousness of the itchy trigger-finger metaphor made flesh.

It is simply this:

Dick Cheney...has a friend.

Could anyone have guessed that the ultimate mad dad, this cantankerous uber-grinch of American policy both foreign and domestic, this epiphany-immune Scrooge , this man who, though compulsively draft-dodging, is a dead ringer for some Pat Conroy novel-inspiring brute of a military academy commandant, this unapologetic and presumably first-ever-in-the-senate-halls "go fuck yourself" sayer, this grunting millionaire, this proud swinger of the revolving door between the governmental and the military-industrial, this fear-mongering stone gargoyle of a party chief who’d look terrifyingly at home in an old black-and-white Kremlin photo, clad in heavy dark overcoat and fur hat, gazing sternly out over a sea of goose-stepping troops and world-ending ballistic missiles, this mirthless, shipless Ahab so sour and without pity that his own heart attacks him on a weekly basis...has a friend.

Could there be some scrap of human love in him? Not Agape, of course, and certainly not Eros, but at least a smidgen of Philia?

Might he have a chance at redemption? Maybe so…

Go ahead, God, it's finally time. I sense an opening. Send in the ghosts of carefully chosen Christmases! Send in that "Tuesdays With Morrie" guy and team him up with Barbara Walters and let's just see what happens! Yes, it’s just crazy enough to succeed! Maybe things really will work out for the best…Iraq will settle down, Katrina victims will be able to return to a safe New Orleans, global warming will finally be addressed! We might just be okay, because Dick Cheney has a friend!!!

But then Dick Cheney went and shot his friend,

in the face,

with a shotgun,

while ostensibly endeavoring to extinguish the blameless life of an almost weightless, defenseless creature with the temerity to defy gravity within 20 yards of the Vice President of the United States.

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Why’d you shoot your friend, Dick?

Did you share some feeling or idea earlier in the day with Whittington, a like-minded and congenial compatriot? Did your heart warm, just a little, and did that scare you?

Were you attempting an auto-amputation of this friend to stem what might otherwise have become a life-changing transfusion of milk of human kindness?

I think we’ll never know, and maybe, tragically, Dick won't either.

Maskism

So my intravenous NPR feed instructed me today, via excessive intonations of comfort-words like "moms" and "kids", that being cold does not lead to getting a cold.

Moms have no good reason anymore to wrestle their kids into big, bulletproof wool balls. Evidently all this bundling up in down simply satisfies the natural parental urge to protect, and meets cultural expectations for appropriate parental behavior. (As NPR noted, an apparently inadequately swaddled child will automatically prompt nearby "seasoned" ladies to admonish the responsible parent.)

Here's the irony, which NPR completely missed: what does work to slow the spread of viruses is skipping work/class when you're ill, and, if you must attend, then wearing a surgical mask. Yet American culture abhors both practices in the extreme. Calvinism rather neatly explains why employers and coworkers resent any sick days you might take.

But what could possibly explain the horror at surgical masks? After all, Asians wear them all the time.

A "friend" provides a perfect example of just how extreme the unacknowledged anti-surgical mask feeling is. This "friend" is currently pursuing a masters degree in public health. The academic requirements involve small classes sitting facing each other around tables in ideal cough and sneeze range. Due to their low frequency, these sessions really can't be skipped even if a student is terribly ill and contagious. Amusingly, the subject of these classes is inevitably how to improve public health and minimize its expense with preventive techniques.

Here's a suggestion, WHY NOT HAVE YOUR STUDENTS WEAR SURGICAL MASKS WHEN THEY HAVE HORRIBLE RESPIRATORY VIRUSES?!? Half the students are doctors, for God's sake! If this group won't wear them, no one in this country ever will. (Except, maybe, in the event of Bird Flu, or confirmation of the recent study suggesting obesity may be virally spread.)

A few possible explanations for this situation:

1. Vanity. This can perhaps be fixed if Nike and Adidas start marketing expensive masks with prominent logos.


2. Coolness, a sub-category of vanity. What's more nerdy than wearing a shapeless, celibacy-inducing down coat in the winter-time? A surgical mask reminiscent of a Japanese salaryman, obviously.

3. Fear of death. Americans don't like intimations of mortality, or even intimations of cold and flu season, in their midst.

4. Cussedness. After all, I've already got the cold. The virus spreading to you is filed under "your problem". America is all about flinty independence. If you're worried about catching my cold then maybe you need to GET OFF MY PROPERTY!

What's the word for a culture which values pointless, silly aesthetics over health and comfort?