Something Orwell Wrote

Mr. Whittington issued a statement today:

The lawyer shot by Vice President Dick Cheney during a hunting trip was being discharged from a hospital on Friday and told reporters he was sorry for all the trouble Cheney had faced over the past week.

..."We are deeply sorry for what Vice President Cheney had to go through this week," Whittington said, appearing emotional in front of television cameras.

In his book "Homage to Catalonia," radical English writer George Orwell talked about his recuperation from a bullet wound through the throat, a wound he received on the Aragon front of the Spanish Civil War. Orwell suffered permanent damage to the vocal cords from the wound. Person after person told Orwell how lucky he was, seeing how the bullet had barely missed the carotid arteries. Orwell wryly commented that he had only wished he was lucky enough to have avoided the bullet altogether.

Orwell was lucky, Cheney was unfortunate: it's a Kafkaesque world!