I have been known to be a little insensitive from time to time, a little too willing to indulge in politically-incorrect humor. I have the hide-ratings to prove it. I will go further and confess to having laughed at many a sick joke, and told a couple too. I am hardly one to complain about insensitivity or to take offense. And indeed, regarding what I heard on the CBS Evening News, I cannot say that I am unduly overwrought. But I am dismayed.
I speak of the story regarding the poisoning at a dog show of Thendara Satisfaction, also known as Jagger, an Irish setter. It is often the case when covering a light story, usually saved for the last part of the show, that the reporter will put as many puns and witticisms into the story as possible. And so, when I first heard that the story was a "cloak and Jagger" tale, I figured the dog must have survived and was doing fine. As the story progressed, we heard such things as having a nose for a story, a canine caper, the curious case of the dog that was murdered in the night, the owners who “can’t get no satisfaction,” it’s a dog-eat-dog world, speculation as to whose paw prints were on the crime, and the question “Who done it?” About half way through this mirthful reporting on the part of Mark Phillips, I realized that Jagger had indeed died.
I know that not everyone is an animal lover like me. I love watching movies where men are slaughtered wholesale, as in The Wild Bunch (1969), but if the dog dies, as in Old Yeller (1957), I am undone. I suppose that is because man is such that he just seems to deserve what he has coming to him. Atheist though I am, I have always been fascinated by the doctrine of original sin in Christianity. As St. Augustine once noted, it is only because children are weak that Jesus admonished us to become like them, for if babies had the size and strength of adults, they would be monsters.
Dogs, on the other hand, seem to embody innocence and unquestioning love. Jesus should have told us we needed to become like dogs to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. But then, the Bible in general does not concern itself with animals, unless it is to declare them unclean or give instructions on killing them. And while many Christians undoubtedly love animals anyway, not needing religious instruction to do so, it is clear that caring about animals is not a universal trait of mankind. And thus it was that it probably never occurred to Mark Phillips that there was any need to treat the poisoning of Jagger with the same solemnity that he would report the death of a human being.
Well, I am not going to righteously condemn Phillips for his insensitivity or moral blindness. He would probably be aghast to hear some of the crudities I have been guilty of in my effort to be amusing. But I am surprised that neither he nor anyone else at CBS who was involved in producing that report seems to have the slightest notion that the poisoning of a dog might not be the occasion for hilarity.