Six pages and still nobody has said “You’ll shoot your eye out, kid!” ???
So, if Wayne LaPierre shoots your kid in the thigh during the commission of a drive-by, is that funny, too? Where can we objectively draw the line demarcating humorous shootings from the serious? I don’t think there’s a line to be drawn anywhere. Gun safety and gun accidents are simply not a laughing matter.
I was wondering whether Whittington was out of the hospital yet, so I googled this, published just this morning:
Two days in the ICU, and several more days in the hospital? That’s not how you treat someone whose wounds were as trivial as they’ve been made out to be.
At any rate, I hope he recovers swiftly, but it’s clear we haven’t exactly been informed of just how serious a shooting this was.
Since I was commenting on the newsworthiness of this shooting, AFAIAC you’re welcome to take away whatever implication you want regarding gun safety.
I’m not sure one intentional fatal shooting and one serious but nonfatal accidental shooting in 171 person-years (there were a lot of years where there was no veep, prior to the 25th Amendment) constitutes relative rarity with respect to either gun homicides or gun accidents. But if you say it is, then I believe you. You know more about these things than I do.
BobLibDem, thanks for the link. I’m still curious though, is there any reason to suspect that the sheriff’s office wasn’t in agreement with waiting to interview Cheney? Was there some sort of an altercation between the Secret Service and Kenedy Co. Law Enforcement? All I see, and this comes from your link, is this… “This was a hunting accident,” said Gilbert San Miguel, chief deputy of the Kenedy County Sheriff’s Office. “There was no alcohol or misconduct.”
Regarding that now the idea he wasn’t drunk is unprovable, does Cheney have a known history of alcohol abuse? Should the female ambassador to Switzerland, the ranch owner and her sister all have been afeared that soon Dick would unzip and bleed his bladder on the nearest bush after drinking too much? We don’t “know for sure” that Cheney wasn’t wearing a bra and panties at the time of the accident either but I’m still at a loss to understand why either would be suggested.
I think all of us would have felt a lot better if the sheriff had been allowed to talk to Cheney that day. It’s the fact that they weren’t that leads to suspicions, no matter how ill-founded. If someone made a deal to not talk to him the next day, obviously one of the locals was not informed since he was turned away. My point is that keeping the veep away from local law enforcement is most decidedly NOT the proper role for the Secret Service.
In all likelihood, Dick wasn’t drinking. With all of his health issues it would be most unwise, particularly if he’s on medications which seems quite likely. If the locals had talked to him that day, it would have been obvious. But they weren’t, hence my objection to the behavior of the SS detail.
Guess not. They’re being assholes, too.
In other news, I’m still waiting for my NRA rep to contact me as promised. I’m gonna add my objections to the callous, light-hearted approach the Whitehouse has apparently decided is appropriate to the communication.
Thanks for the link.
Finally, RTF has noted something about Whittington’s hospital stay that seems anomalous. Seems that way to me, too. But then, the guy is nearly 80 years old.
UncleBeer - please explain the “shoots in the commission of a driveby” - what do you mean? Wayne LaPierre was doing a driveby shooting? Or trying to thwart one? What?
No, it wouldn’t be funny, to me, if it were my son. But if it were me who got shot by the head of the NRA, and he was being an idiot, I’d be a good sport about other people finding it funny. And I’d eventually find it funny, too - assuming I fully recovered (no lifelong pain in the leg, etc).
Take your pick.
Would it be okay then if I make jokes about your shot-up kid? Or would you think me callous and insensitive? Suppose your kid was grown - and a public political figure. Would you take exception to the persons expressing a wish that his injury was more serious, or perhaps terminal? Or is being shot just a slap-happy joke between friends and nothing is out of bounds?
And pedantically: LaPierre isn’t the head of the NRA; he’s executive vice president. Sandra Froman is the president.
At the half, the score remains:
Ted Kennedy - 1
Laura Bush - 1
Dick Cheney - 0
When pressed for comment, Mr. Cheney expressed his dismay for not choosing the vehicular category.
Congratulations the acceptance of your application for membership, Magill. Go sit over there with the other initiates in the asshole club.
Who did that?
Good Lord, man - it was funny when Bush fell off his mountain bike, even though people sometimes DIE in bike accidents. It’s now funny that I fell off a ladder once, getting big bruises, even though people sometimes DIE, or are permanently paralyzed, falling off ladders.
Things aren’t black and white. There are degrees.
The alternative is that everyone in the world is an asshole but you.
Again, where have you seen that?
Cite it or stop it. :dubious:
Right here…
Sometimes it takes years to develop an accurate perception of a poster. Then, other times, there’s a defining moment. For this guy…
Ah, got it - maybe I’ve gotten too used to simply scrolling past Alaric’s babblings.
Is there anyone *not * already established as batshit crazy saying it?
And just so you know it wasn’t a massive fucking typo…
Dickholishness on a truly gargantuan scale. “Offensive” doesn’t even begin to cover such a sentiment.
I think Armstrong’s reliability as a witness is about dead. Her first thought was that Cheney had had a heart attack. How can this be possible if she witnessed the shooting?
From the article–
Hey, now, my Aerosmith parody was a little funny, and all me. Well, I did get the Cheney’s got a gun reference from Jon Stewart, but otherwise, it was all me. Well, me and Aerosmith, and Jon Stewart, but you get the idea.
Glory in it? Perhaps because there is often in incongruities a humorous element? Perhaps because at some level, when some individually determined criterion line of pain to others has not been crossed, people find humor in spills, pratfalls, unintended events. There used to be this show, see, that consisted of old movie shorts about these three guys, two brothers (a fat bald one and a grump with a bowl haircut) and a buddy with a big head of frizzy hair, who always got into these odd predicaments, often resulting in a bunch of infighting, often with tools. And people thought it was funny!
If you’ve never found amusement from an incident that may have involved pain to someone else, you are a man apart. Congratulations, and thanks for being such a shining example for the rest of us. We will aspire to rise to your level, but first may we have a shoe or a gourd of yours to use as a symbol?
Why, by the way, didn’t you express this concern when you first entered the thread?
And none of it with any bearing on your observations about the typical concerns about compassionless conservatives, and whether that has to do with sheer callousness at any individual example of suffering, or a more abstract lack of compassion for others in more dire straights. This is what I wonder if you are really confused about. On a tangent, I wonder who George W. Bush was trying to distinguish himself from by noting that he was a “compassionate conservative.” I also wonder if there is any debate in whether he succeeded or not, but that’s for another thread.
Relax UncleBeer. Proper gun safety is something to be taken very seriously, but sometimes gun accidents are funny. Remeber the video of the police officer giving a demo on gun safety and then shooting himself in the foot (or thigh, or whatever it was)? That was funny.
You asked what the limits for it being joke-worthy are. There is only really one: no one was killed and injuries were neither serious nor permanent (as far as we know). Sure there are probably some instances where this is true and it still wouldn’t be funny, but that is the critical thing.