When George Bush was first told about a plane crashing into the WTC on September 11, supposedly his first thought was about the type of moron who had been allowed to fly that plane. A lot of people had hissy-fits about that, and the deer-caught-in-the-headlights expression he had immediately thereafter certainly didn't help, but that was always one criticism of the President that I couldn't buy, since I had the exact same reaction. When I logged in to the 'net on 9/11, and saw the headline, "Plane Crashes Into Twin Towers", my first thought related to the recent deaths of JFK II and Payne Stewart, and was along the lines, "dammit, when are they going to ground these amateur pilots anyways?", and not, "oh god we've been attacked by an Islamofascist terror network based in Afghanistan--The Battle is Joined, at last--Let's man the barricades, and keep the aspidistra flying !!" Maybe that wasn't the classiest sort of thought that a President needed to share with the American People during a time of war, even one engaged against a metaphor, but I could appreciate the sentiment.

So let's just say that I'm not going to join in the public condemnation over Brit Hume's remarks yesterday morning. He probably would like to rephrase what he said, but admitting that you briefly thought about how this would impact investments on Wall Street, immediately after you've been asked a question about how the stock market reacted in the wake of the bombings, is quite human. A lot of the things I thought about yesterday (as well as on 9/11) were selfish and petty as well, and if you don't live in the immediate vicinity of such a tragedy, I expect that the same was true with most of you.

That's why days like July 7, 2005 are such terrible days for blogging; one of our more annoying habits as a species is the attempt to cram events into little pigeonholes of our own devising. We bring certain beliefs to the table, and then when a traumatic event happens, we immediately attempt to shape the contours of that event to fit our world view. It takes time to reconsider our positions, but blogging is a craft that rewards snap judgments, harsh (even violent) rhetoric, and a manichaen, polarized mindset. So why should Brit Hume have been any different than you or me?