Chewing on Cheney's ankles

If we needed evidence that there is a total disconnect - a short circuit - between what happens in Washington, D.C., and what happens in the rest of America, we certainly got it last week.

The vice president of the United States shot a friend of his, a 78-year-old man, in the face and shoulder with birdshot. They were hunting quail, and the friend - Harry Whittington - made the mistake of retrieving a bird without announcing where he was. Then Vice President Cheney made the mistake of shooting him while following a covey of quail with his 28-gauge shotgun.

You know all this.

It's what is called an accident.

You also know that after the shooting was announced, reporters in Washington, D.C., were up in arms, demanding to know why they weren't informed of the story more quickly, and why the story first appeared in the Corpus Christi Caller-Times. One reporter even had the temerity to ask, "Has [the vice president] offered his resignation?"

That is what is called a lynch mob.

I just shake my head in absolute befuddlement that our country has come to the point where our main source of amusement is inflicting pain and humiliation on others, especially if they are "public figures."

But perhaps I should not be surprised. This is, after all, the same species that gave us human sacrifice and "The Jerry Springer Show," so inflicting pain on our fellow humans may be second nature for us.

Of course, some people may not think Dick Cheney is human. I get the feeling that the pack of bloodthirsty hounds in the White House press room thinks he is an old buck, and that if they run him hard enough he will tire and falter and they will bring him down by biting at his ankles.

Meantime, life outside the press room goes on as normal. Police do their investigations. Doctors do their tests. The patient works on his recovery. Both the shooter and the man shot and their families pray together and singly. They pray for healing, but they also pray for patience.

Yes, patience. That is what they all need now as a trying, hard personal time is turned into a public spectacle.

Certainly, everyone understands the need for an investigation by the proper authorities whenever a shooting occurs. There is nothing wrong with expecting that the vice president should not get special treatment because of his office.

But there is something wrong with expecting the vice president not to be afforded the same courtesies that we would all expect if we were in the same circumstances. He should certainly be allowed the same privacy to compose himself at a time of great sadness and stress that we would want. And he certainly should not be demonized as a bad person because of an accident.

But some people don't get it.

Starting with the Washington press corps, and then followed by Democratic pundits and politicians and even a few Republican ones, it became a kind of parlor game last week to construct fantastic conspiracy theories out of the substance of rumor and innuendo. Cheney and Whittington, it was noted, were hunting with women who were "not their wives." Drinking had taken place, and it was very possible the vice president was "impaired," even though he only had one beer at lunch several hours earlier. There may not have been a "delay" in getting the story out so much as a "cover-up."

All week long, the allegations (or whispers) from the self-important poobahs of the Potomac grew more and more absurd, until finally you just wanted to vomit up all the poison that you had ingested and get clean of it somehow.

But perhaps somewhere in all this ugliness there is a lesson we can learn. Perhaps the fact that this was a hunting accident provides a metaphor which can help us to understand our own human foibles better.

In that spirit, it is interesting to note that the concept of "sin" refers to "missing the mark" in the sense of an archer falling short of a target. To sin is therefore to be human, to err, to fall short of perfection. It is indeed a universal condition which nonetheless many think they can cloak over in themselves.

Maybe it is the same in this modern-day parable of the shooter and the shot. It seems that Dick Cheney missed his target, fell short of his intention of doing the right thing, just as the sinner so often cannot live up to his good intentions.

Christ warned us, "He that is without sin let him cast the first stone," against the sinner, but judging by the number of people throwing stones at Dick Cheney, that same sense of humility and forgiveness is in short supply when you change the message to "He that has never made a mistake, let him cast the first stone."

Perhaps I'm in a better position than the rest of you to identify with the vice president in this situation since I too shot a friend in a hunting accident. It was when I was about 13 years old, at a time when my best friend and I used to like to take BB guns and pellet guns into the woods to shoot at sparrows and other small birds.

I was walking behind my friend in the brush when he released a branch that hit my arm and caused me to pull the trigger on the gun I was carrying. Fortunately it was only a pellet gun, but through my own carelessness in not engaging the safety, I shot my best friend in the base of the skull. He cried out and stopped in his tracks and for the longest time I thought I had killed him. Fortunately, the CO2 cartridge that powered the pellet gun was nowhere near as powerful as gun powder, and my friend survived my stupidity with no more than an ugly raised red welt at the base of his hairline, though at first we thought it was a bullet hole.

You probably can't imagine the horrible feeling you get when you do something so incredibly stupid and put another person's life at risk by shooting them accidentally.

In my case, the risk was minimal. In Cheney's case it was extreme. But in both cases, we did what human beings often do - we made mistakes, felt horrible about it, and tried to do what was right afterwards.

"He that has never made a mistake, let him cast the first stone."