"Toxic Fumes" appears in East Tennessee's Environmental Journal, The Hellbender Press (http://www.hellbenderpress.com/).
Note: This version of the column reads somewhat differently than the one in the print edition.
Hunting Legal Eagles
By Scott McNutt
Legal eagle shoots, such as the one held in Texas for Vice President Dick Cheney back in February, have many defenders. Some enthusiasts argue that, Dick being the VEEPEE, he should be able to shoot whoever he wants to, rank having its privileges and all (a concept derived from the original Latin legal term, "Vaddus Biggus Dickus Vantus, Biggus Dickus Gettus"). Others say attorneys’ incessant, smug use of that insufferable Latin legal jargon is reason enough to gather them up and shoot them. "‛Pro bono’ this up your ASS," these others say.
Some claim that left to their own devices, lawyers would breed like jackrabbits and eat themselves out of house and torts and would eventually overrun the planet. So, managed kills are necessary to control the population. Of course, this argument ignores the fact that many such hunts are either on reservations stocked with game, like the Texas ranch Dick visited in February, or are "canned hunts," which the Dickman also enjoys.
Canned hunts feature legal eagles and other game that are raised in captivity, then released mere yards away from a hunting party. This tactic spares the party the tediousness of doing any actual hunting, allowing them to jump right into the joy of killing. Indeed, that’s probably an advertising slogan for canned hunts: "None of the Hunt, All of the Slaughter!"
Yet other hunt proponents suggest that lawyers don’t feel pain, so shooting them in the face at close range isn’t barbaric. The argument is that killing lawyers can’t be considered "inhumane" because, well, lawyers aren’t human. At least, run-of-the-millionaire Texas Republican legal eagles that work as political operatives aren’t. Thus are canned lawyer hunts justified.
True though that may be, let me appeal to your sense of pity. Now, I know what you’ll say. You’ll argue that political legal eagles are a subhuman species whose usual method of accepting a client’s retainer is to gleefully bite off the hand the retainer’s held in. It is also true that, if caught in a legal trap, rather than answer a question honestly, they are more likely to gnaw off their own foot, then sue for damages to their bridgework. In fact, when it comes right down to it, I can’t blame you for having no sympathy for them, since I harbor nothing but creeping, goose-pimply revulsion toward political legal eagles. OK, skip the appeal to pity.
Instead, let me appeal to your sense of fair play. Set aside your distaste for species "politicus jurisprudencius fowlus." They may be shiftier than Eve’s serpent and lower than a dung beetle’s belly, but they are God’s creatures too. And besides, this isn’t specifically about such legal eagles. This is about the unfairness of "canned hunts" in general. Just consider the circumstances of Dickster Trickster’s recent Texas massacre.
The lawyer that was the prey in that hunt was so stupefied by being in the great outdoors that it blundered "prima facie" (that is, "face first") into Dick’s shotgun blast. How sporting is that? Even the farm-bred pheasants that the Dickey likes to have tossed from nets into his line of fire during canned hunts have sense enough to attempt to fly away from the guns’ discharge.
During one canned pheasant hunt at the Rolling Rock Club in Ligonier Township, Pennsylvania, His Dickness is said to have slaughtered 70 of the plump, harmless, bewildered fowl, while the rest of his party tallied up another 347 of the pheasants. For desert, the shooters annihilated an untold number of similarly docile and corpulent mallard ducks.
As ghastly and unsporting as that may sound, just picture row upon row of dazed, dumb Republican lawyers lost on the range where the deer and the antelope play dead, stumbling into the VEEP’s sights, only to be mowed down by his shotgun’s blazing barrels. Only Dick’s occasional need to reload or one of his spasmodic urges to shoot a member of his own political hunting party would allow the confused consiglieres any respite.
So, if there are to be lawyer hunts, at least hunt them in their natural environs, so that they may use their natural defense mechanisms. After all, in the wild, quail and pheasant use defenses such as natural camouflage, flight, and shitting in hunters’ eyes to escape death. Similarly, let political barristers be sought in their usual haunts, so they have a fighting chance at survival.
Track them prowling down Senate lobbies, slaking their thirst in their private clubs, trailing behind ambulances and, of course, sleeping in their clients’ beds (with their clients’ wives). Seeking political legal eagles in their natural habitat is simply fairer.
In such settings, wild mouthpieces may fight back with natural defenses of their own, making for more challenging sport. Imagine yourself cornering the untamed attorney in a bar, when the bayed creature turns on you with an argument "in loco parentis" (literally, "if you kill me, my firm will have your parents declared insane and will steal their estate from you"). Or perhaps you’ll be stalking it outside the courthouse when it turns and presents with "writs of habeas corpus" (literally, "if you don’t want your house seized, guarantee in writing that you won’t turn me into a corpse"). Possibly you’ll have tracked it back to its lair when it springs upon you with its most desperate defense, statements of "flagrante delicto" (literally, "I’m not flagrantly delicious; don’t shoot me").
Wouldn’t such hunts afford more pulse-pounding thrills for Dick than simply slaughtering tame, sluggish, pudgy birds? If you happen to know the VEEPer, will you suggest this to him? And while you’re at it, how about suggesting arming the quails and pheasants in his next canned hunt, too?
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