THE NEW YORK TIMES IS GUN-CRAZY--JUST LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE IN THE USA


Here's today's  prize New York Times  headline:  "SPAIN'S SOCIALIST LEADER TAKES HIS SHOT AT FORMING GOVERNMENT."

     The headline writers at the New York Times are gun nuts .  Every day somebody "takes a shot at" something in the great American newspaper.  I guess that with gun-shots everywhere and all the time in the United States, living there you automatically think and speak in terms of violence.  And as the leader of sophisticated intelligence in America, the New York Times  has to lead in violent language as well as everything else.

     If you live in the United States, shooting becomes part of your everyday speech.  (And if you live there long enough, you may well get shot.  Lots and lots of people do, every day. ) Everybody in American "takes a shot" at everything--and everybody.  Does Bernie Sanders have a shot at the presidency?  Did Donald Trump shoot himself in the foot with the KKK?  Does John Kasich have a shot at the Republican nomination?  Has poor Ted Cruz shot his wad already?  This is Hilary Clinton's second shot at the Democratic nomination.  If Sanders gets too close to Clinton, they will have a real shoot-out.

     Real shoot-outs happen every day in the United States.  Everywhere.  And most everybody has--and carries--a gun.  Several years ago a  "Christian" minister in Kentucky asked all his parishoners to bring their guns to church the next Sunday--and promised he would be wearing two of his guns.  People drove a hundred miles and more to attend.  The little church was packed with gun-toting Christians, praising Jesus.

     (I remember the World War II song, "Praise the Lord, and pass the ammunition."  It was even better than "Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war."  I remember, too,  many years later, clearing out my aunt's and uncle's apartment after their death.  My sister and I found four pistols and a huge rifle--and a big box of dangerously decomposed black-powder shells.  The aunt and uncle lived in a second-floor apartment in a nice, safe part of a town of 50,000 people.)

     Twenty years ago I was in England with my usual group of thirteen University of Michigan literature students.  One was a very good, bright, pleasant young man who always responded to things he didn't like--a bad joke, somebody passing our big van on a curve, noisy drunks in a bar--by pointing his right index finger, raising his thumb, and making a sort of "pow" sound.  One night in Dorchester some of my students were playing darts at the Sun Inn, where we stayed every year for a week.  We weren't very good at darts, but we always played.  Actually, we were so bad we were the entertainment.  That night Jesse aimed his dart, threw, and it stuck in the wall of the bar, about a foot from the target.

     One of the locals guffawed rather loudly.  Jesse looked at him, pointed his right index finger, raised his thumb, and went "pow!"  There was silence in the bar.  And then the man who had laughed said, "Oh.  I forgot.  You're an American."

     The man didn't need to say anything more.  Jesse caught on immediately.  He turned red, ducked his head, and left the room.  I never saw him do his little mime again.

     Maybe the one good thing about selfie-sticks is that their users--mostly Americans--can take "shots" of (or at) themselves.

     I wish the New York Times could quit "shooting" things--or people--every day.