The I-35 westbound bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis collapsed, sending rush hour traffic tumbling into the river below. Rescue crews rapidly descended on the location only to be blocked by the media and onlookers stumbling over one another to get the best pictures of the carnage to upload to YouTube.
Back in Washington, DC the rush to find someone to blame has already begun. Taking to the floor of the Senate, Senator Dick Durbin said, "You would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags or some mad regime — Pol Pot or others — that had no concern for human beings." Senator Kerry blamed Republican politics saying, "What you see here is a harvest of four years of complete avoidance of real problem-solving and real governance in favor of spin and ideology."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi released a statement saying, "While George Bush was passing tax cuts for the rich and pursuing an unwinnable war in Iraq, he left our infrastructure crumbling."
Vice President Cheney released a statement from an undisclosed location rebutting the claims of some Democrats saying, "This is a stark reminder that we live in a post-9/11 world where Al Qaeda can cause a tragedy like this. We should all be reinforced that we are fighting a global war on terror."
The linking of the bridge collapse to the war on terror only increased the rage on popular left-wing hate blogs like the DailyKos where one commenter said, "At least when Mussolini ruled with fascism in Italy, the trains ran on time. With HitlerBushCo and his fascist regime, we can't even keep bridges standing."
It wasn't just the partisans who were quick to lay blame on the Bush administration. Recently fired professor Ward Churchill cited America's imperialist policies and called those who were injured or killed in the collapse "little Eichmanns". National Organization of Women President Kim Gandy noted the lack of media coverage on the women victims and said that "this tragedy is a stark reminder that the Bush Administration has again and again failed women." Planned Parenthood is offering free abortions and contraception for those affected by the collapse.
Louis Farrakhan suggested that the bridge was blown up to kill the minority population. Reverend Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson have already announced plans to travel to the area highlighting that the slow response to the tragedy was due to racism and the overwhelming majority of victims were minorities. Comedian Chris Rock was quick to rebut this claim saying, "There are no black people in Minnesota. The only black people in Minnesota are Prince and Kirby Puckett."
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Jay Rath
You're criticizing commentary that might (or might not) occur tomorrow?
You might want to wait until there is something to satirize before you weigh in on a tragedy that's barely a few hours old.
I'm a former staffer at The Onion, and I find this to be in horrible taste.
Oh -- and if you have to explain your jokes at the end of your story, it's not funny.
2 - elsa
I am also appalled. :-(
3 - Doug DeLong
Timing is everything. You just don't satirize something while bodies are still floating in the river and family members are desparately searching for loved ones.
Send your article to Ann Coulter,though. She'll probably love it.
4 - John Bambenek
Tomorrow when they're already saying it, it isn't satirizing, it's reality.
And the commentary is already happening.
5 - John Bambenek
like this
6 - Dr Dreadful
Make that three of us.
It seems as if John has had this piece written for a while, with blanks ready to be filled in, waiting for a tragedy like this to make whatever twisted point he's trying to make.
Let's be appalled about the folks making political capital out of this when and if they do so. Not now, when the dust has barely settled and the bodies of the dead aren't even cold in the fucking morgue.
Badly done, John. Very badly done.
7 - Jeff
I hope the families of the six dead people get to read this. They'll need a laugh when they are planning the funerals.
8 - gonzo marx
irony to me is writing something like this while bodies are still being recovered to make even a valid point is being at least as much of a whore as what the Article is feebly attempting to skewer
objects in mirror are closer than they appear
Excelsior?
9 - Nik
I find this extraordinarily tasteless and not even effective satire in the least.
10 - John Bambenek
say that tomorrow when most of this shit is already on the airwaves....
Tomorrow this piece wouldn't be satire, it'd be summary.
11 - gonzo marx
irony to me is writing something like this while bodies are still being recovered to make even a valid point is being at least as much of a whore as what the Article is feebly attempting to skewer
objects in mirror are closer than they appear
Excelsior?
12 - John Bambenek
see I told you so.
see I told you so.
[Duplicated link deleted]
Tomorrow morning there will be more SITYS.
13 - Nik
My problem is I fail to see any difference between your own essay and the "pundits and politicians" you're railing against for "descends on human tragedy to chuck corpses at their political opponents." The only difference is you're using satire as a cloak to excuse your own exploitation of this event, IMHO. Perhaps you didn't intend this but there's really no other way I can read this myself.
14 - Dan
It does read like a preemptive strike from someone who knows where the blame lies, but thinks no one should say anything about it or be considered tactless.
Maybe we should start having a discussion on infrastructure, considering my home state of Pennsylvania gets closer to a disaster like this every day and politicians ignore the problem.
Thanks for legitimizing the discussion by showing how shallow any satire of the situation can be. Keep it up.
15 - STM
Yeah, really fu.king piss-poor John.
Bodies in the water and all that.
Just makes you look like a fair-dinkum prize c...
16 - Doug DeLong
Saying "See I told you so" doesn't justify the satire. If your point is that some people might exploit a tragedy to score political points, fine, make that point, or better yet, wait until you can point to concrete examples and write about that.
But when you satirize a tragedy of this magnitude, it just makes you look really insensitive to the plight of people who are affected by the tragedy. That's the real problem.
17 - Egbert Sousé
Let me get this straight, you don't like when people exploit a tragedy to push their agenda, so you are going to exploit a tragedy to push your agenda. I am sure you see a difference.
Note to author: Satire is supposed to be funny. The formula is "Comedy equals tragedy plus time." I agree with the Onion fellow. If you have to explain it, then you failed as a writer.
"And you know some asshole has a video that he made instead of trying to help someone"
It reads better if you take out "a video that he made" and insert "blogged about it." I am guessing most commentors will agree with me.
18 - zenbullets
Just to speak in John's defence, I don't think there is anything in his article that is disrepectful to the injured or their families, and his satire makes a valid point.
19 - Dave Nalle
Jeez. People. He's not satirizing the bridge collapse or the victims, he's satirizing opportunistic politicians from both parties. Hardly the same thing at all.
Dave
20 - STM
OK, but the timing's a shocker. In retrospect, it might have been better to wait. And call me old-fashioned, but I'm not sure it really is satire when it's posted the same day the ice-cream's hit the fan. His motives might (at a pinch) be pure, but perception is everything when it comes to this stuff.
21 - Daryl d
I loved it! It's so truthful that it hurts.
22 - Christopher Rose
Mr Bambenek may be satirizing political opportunism but his timing is appalling, his insensitivity breathtaking and he is also doing exactly the same as those he targets.
It is not news that both sides of the US political "spectrum" are doing a major disservice to the people they purport to serve so another article in this vein is no more than another cheap shot from one side to the other. It hardly matters which side is targetting which.
Oh, and it is not very funny either, satire isn't easy to do well and this article isn't satirical, although it does bite...
23 - Justin Higgins
Nothing he writes about makes fun of the victims, he's almost ultra-careful to avoid that part of the tragedy. Good attack on the politicians that exploit John.
24 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
John,
Couldn't you have waited with this? The timing is appalling. It's never funny when people die in a disaster or a terror attack. But a satire can be done after a time - like a week after the bodies are buried...
25 - Peter
I'm all for political skewering, but I gotta be honest and say I'm not "digg"ing this at all -- literally or figuratively. The fact that this went up before all the bodies have been recovered (at least according to 2 news resources this morning) is both appalling and tasteless. To quote Ricky Roma from Glengarry Glen Ross, "you never open your mouth until you know what the shot is."
I usually like your stuff, John, but if this is what passes for "news commentary" in a post Virginia Tech world, then I'd better turn in my press badge. Maybe next time you'll ask yourself W.W.J.D.? (What would Jon Stewart Do?)