Uber-socialist Joseph Stalin is famous for saying: “The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions, merely a statistic.” Today, the Angry Left proves that any death is of meaning only in that it fulfills their political aspirations. This sad story from WSJ: Best of the Web Today:

Angry Left Death Wish
Posting on the Daily Kos, the Mos Eisley of the Angry Left, a reader called “redlief” wonders how to feel about Harry Whittington, the victim in Vice President Dick Cheney’s hunting accident (quoting verbatim):

am I suppose to be praying?

That Whittington dies and Cheney goes to jail for manslaughter or that Mr. Whittington recovers and lives a full and peaceful life?

Oh, that’s right, were a progessive website.

”Hang in there, Whitti, ol man, we’re a prayin for ya!”

A reader of this site, whose name we won’t mention in the interest of avoiding unrest in the reader’s office, writes:

I just had to vent regarding an overheard conversation at my office. The liberals across the cubicle from me were discussing the man Dick Cheney accidentally shot, and were joking about the fact that he’s apparently had a mild heart attack as a result of a pellet that entered his heart area. Laughing about it, one of them said he wished the gentleman would die so it would harm Mr. Cheney politically, to which everyone else laughed.

Normally I roll my eyes and go on with my work when I hear most of their discussions, but this one made my jaw drop. What kind of human beings are these people, that they’d wish an elderly man would die so that it would somehow boost the Democrats politically (which is an extremely questionable presumption in the first place)?

Such morbid speculation has crept into the mainstream media as well. A writer for Time magazine offered this last night:

He’s 78. He got hit in the face and body by a spray of tiny pellets. He’s back in intensive care. It’s not inconceivable that the vice-president may have accidentally killed someone. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. I don’t know Texas law; and I’m not a lawyer. But wouldn’t this be a case of something like negligent homicide?

This morning’s New York Times picks up the theme:

In Texas, Carlos Valdez, the district attorney in Kleberg County, said a fatality would immediately spur a new report from the local sheriff and, most likely, a grand jury investigation.

Reports of Whittington’s death are greatly exaggerated. A physician who reads this column writes:

Calling the pellet-induced arrhythmia a “heart attack” is a little sensationalist. A “heart attack” is not an official medical term, and is generally taken as meaning a blockage of a significant cardiac artery and resultant damage to the heart. Calling the pellet-induced heart damage a “heart attack” is like calling a bruise a “tissue infarction.” The pellet presumably irritated a small area of heart tissue or obstructed a tiny blood vessel.

Caution is in order here: Our reader is not a cardiologist and has not examined Whittington. But the Corpus
Christi Caller-Times–the paper that scooped and humiliated the petulant layabouts of the Washington press corps—quotes Whittington’s doctors and outside experts as saying the prognosis is good:

Barring further complications, the 78-year-old attorney shot by Vice President Dick Cheney is expected to recover after suffering a minor heart attack after a piece of birdshot migrated to his heart, medical specialists said Tuesday.

”It’ll be left in there assuming everything goes well,” said Peter Banko, vice president and administrator of Christus Spohn Hospital Memorial. “He could probably live the rest of his life with that in there.” . .
.

Dr. Pat Whitlow, director of interventional cardiology at The Cleveland Clinic Heart Center, said Whittington shouldn’t face any problems living with the small BB.

”I’ve seen patients before that come in for other reasons, and we see birdshot that is still lodged in the vicinity of their heart, and they’ve never had a problem with it,” Whitlow said.

Whitlow said birdshot in the pericardium, or the lining sack around the heart, would cause an irregular heartbeat.

”That has caused an inflammatory response that is associated with irregular heartbeats,” Whitlow said. “(Irregular heartbeats) are a nuisance but are not life-threatening.”

It sounds, then, as though Whittington has a good heart—which is more than one can say for many in the press and the Angry Left.

Update: Developments today lead me to believe that this might just be another Rovian Mousetrap.
By this time tomorrow, I suspect we might see public opinion taking what the chattering classes might consider an “ugly” turn. Time will tell.