Cecil’s Revenge: Perils of Palmer, Part Deux

Posted: August 3rd, 2015 | Filed under: Culture, Politics, Ruminations | No Comments »

In a less insane, yet still digitally-accelerated world where each 24 hour media cycle seem like a pony express ride from Topeka to Tobanga, we should have by now forgotten his name, his misdeed and moved on to the next he say she say brouhaha.

In a society morphing curioser and curioser with each passing un-birthday celebration, the guy, accused of stealing time, the guy with the maddest hat, the chapeau you could buy from him for ten shillings and a sixpence, that guy might have paused, then wondered, “Palmer . . . Palmer . . . wasn’t he that not so mild mannered Minnesota cavity-filler who  . . . what was it he did?”

So, contrary to the normal course of events in our increasingly social media-run culture, Walter Palmer, DMD remains in the headlines. Even if he remains in hiding, literally, a pariah.

This cultural weltanschauung continues to fascinate, to extrapolate into any number of considerations, overwhelm like a tsunami.

First there was the inevitable confirmation of Newton’s 3d Law. To the initial outrage, there was an equal and opposing backlash.

It was just a lion, why the hatred? It happened in Africa, what’s it got to do with the U.S. of A.? Where’s the outrage about all the people being killed here in America?

Why now, people have been paying tens of thousands of dollars for decades, going on big game hunting safaris in Africa?

Which, since the pendulum swings as pendulums do, invigorated the vitriol. Palmer’s office was besieged with protests and signs of people’s disgust.

Then the media watchers stepped in. How much is too much? Is the reaction to Palmer’s heinous actions out of proportion to his act? Does the fellow deserve exile?

And then, and then . . . and then along came the most unfortunate if hardly unforeseeable twist in the whole tale.

Fox News has reported that GOP presidential polling leader, one Donald Trump,¹ has offered to pay Doc’s legal bills, pontificating that “Walter Palmer has done nothing wrong.”²

So, as the first Roger Ailes-dictated Republican candidate “debate” draws nigh, the current favorite of the elephant herd, The Donald, is weighing in, not on global warming, or the financial crises in Greece and Puerto Rico, or the undue influence of big money in elections, or the deficit situation, or the inordinate number of blacks being felled in the name of law enforcement, or the state of health care, or even his favorite cause du jour, foreign illegals sneaking across the Rio Grande, but on the fate of Walter Palmer.

As Chester A. Riley so adroitly mused decades ago, when his TV show ruled Friday nights, “What a revolting development this is!”

It’s bad enough that a nation of tweeterers and facebookers, along with erstwhile “observers of the passing scene” like myself, expend inordinate amounts of energy considering the ethical decisions made by Walter Palmer DMD. Now the subject has breached the wall of presidential debate like some fast growing cancer.

Where have you gone Walter Cronkite, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you?

 

 

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