Heart Attack Harry

While the post-title reminds one of the old Dana Carvey SNL character Massive Headwound Harry, we are speaking of course, of hapless Harry, specifically Harry Whittington, the Austin, Texas based attorney who Dick Cheney accidentally shot full of pellets intended for farm-raised quail. More specifically, Mr. Whittington had a “mild” heart attack as a result of one or more of the pellets lodged in or near his heart bringing about a “fibrilation”.
While the recriminations will fly over the apparent breaches of protocol and procedure associated with the nearly day-long delay in announcing news of this unfortunate accident to the press, and more importantly, in permitting the local constabulary to do their “routine investigation”, let’s face it: had this been anyone but the Vice-President, one man’s “agreement between the vice-president’s office and the local sheriff not to bother the poor man till morning” might quickly become another man’s “obstruction of justice.”
For good measure, the first doctor Mr. Whittington saw, Dr. Raj Subnani in Kingsland, Texas, concluded that “oh he’s fine; if he wasn’t shot by the Vice-President, he’d have gone home with anti-biotics– no royal treatment…”
Needless to say, this doctor might lead one to conclude that there is but one standard of medicine in rural Texas: awful. Not one standard for everyone except people shot by the vice-president… just one standard…
Now… the fact is (my pregnant hypotheses about, oh, substance abuse, aside) there is no reason to believe that what transpired was not simply a tragic accident– maybe one or more participants were negligent, but this is certainly foreseeable as an accident. Ah, but… it’s never the crime– it’s always about the cover-up.
And therein lies the story. The fact is, there was probably a preferred procedure, of running the press on this through the White House, and allowing local law enforcement, the FBI and Secret Service, to do an appropriate canvassing (witness statements, securing the accident scene, securing the weapons, etc.) so that, frankly, people like me (and the roughly 70-80% of the American people who believe that Republicans such as Dick Cheney are capable of committing crimes) would not be in a position to speculate about sinister things transpiring that, I’m sure, didn’t happen at all.
Unless they did, of course.
But by making up procedure as they went along, the Cheney party has now managed to cast suspicion on the vice-president that he did something wrong– suspicion not helped, of course, by early attempts to blame, and then mock, the victim… blaming and mocking that is more fun when it looks like you probably haven’t actually killed the man.
And so there you have it. It all reminds me of a story whereby a bear has been terrorizing a town, and a local hunter promises to take his trusty shotgun and deal with the bear; he returns to town, after having not only failed to kill the bear, but evidently having been sodomized by it. The hunter contends his shotgun wasn’t powerful enough, so he heads out with an uzi at nightfall. Again, by morning, he returns to town, after having not only failed to kill the bear, but evidently having been sodomized by it. The hunter contends his uzi wasn’t powerful enough, so he heads out with a bazooka at nightfall. Sure enough, he encounters the bear again. The bear looks at him, and says “This isn’t about hunting, is it?”