A Mixed Up World

In between warnings that Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar may be joining the “liberal herd” and calls to extend Bush’s tax cuts to “slash the budget and the bloat” was this creepy posture that appeared as an official editorial stance on Jan. 26 in the Colorado Springs Gazette (bold added).

We were relieved to read that rebel forces in Congo have sworn off eating rare silverback mountain gorillas, in response to an international outcry (we prefer ours prepared medium well, for what it’s worth). Now, if only we could get the rebels to stop killing a more plentiful but still important species – homo sapiens. It’s a mixed-up world we live in, when guerilla fighters can be shamed into sparing the lives of endangered animals, fearing bad PR, but will go right on butchering people.

At least one reader was not amused.

Letter writer Nikki Brooker of Colorado Springs responded on Thursday, Feb. 1.

For a newspaper editorial to state, even jokingly, that the writer prefers his silverback mountain gorillas “prepared medium well,” is the ultimate in stupidity, arrogance and shortsightedness.

One final, but important, observation: The op/ed headline writer chose to stick this headline on Brooker’s letter of criticism:  “YA BIG APES!”

Cara DeGette is a longtime Colorado journalist and a senior fellow at Colorado Confidential. E-mail her at cdegette@coloradoconfidential.com.