The Blasts at the British Consulate Brouhaha

This week - at least here, where I can see NY TV stations from the emerald hills of Vermont - there was a dirth of almost everything but the "mysterious blasts" that happened outside the British Consulate in Lower Manhattan. So much was made of it that you'd think it was 9/11-lite.

But it wasn't. Two "novelty" (wtf!) grenades went off outside where there are massive cement planters. No one was injured.

Yet the media continued on with this story, pointing out how the government was looking long and hard at some Dutch worker at the UN for this, and that it might have been to protest Tony Blair's re-election or something to do with Jews Opposed to the Occupation (of Palestinian lands).

Would that the media would only look so long and hard at just one of Bush's harmful actions. Or not blow a reasonably minimal event so out of proportion to scare a population still affected by the awful morning of 9-11 into looking warily at their neighbors.

It's not that I think setting off novelty grenades is a good idea. I don't. I don't believe the road to "better" is paved with acts of violence, either real or implied. Yes, the grenades got attention without ANYONE being hurt. But it's still not "good".

Yet I want the media to have some perspective on this. In a week where we saw the Bush Administration again and again "investigate itself" on Abu Ghraib, the soldier who killed those unarmed or injured (and sometimes old) men in a mosque, on the attack on the Italian journalist's escape vehicle - and ALWAYS pronounce itself innocent, instead, all the attention went to a rather nothing event. No one was hurt. There was no intention for people to be hurt. There was no real threat.

Compare that to the ruin that comes to anything and everything the Bushies touch.