Brave, brave Barbaro

Alright, this is crazy. Barbaro was an amazing thoroughbred whose Kentucky Derby run last year was one of the most dominant performances since Secretariat and whose Preakness breakdown was one of the most gut-wrenching scenes I've ever seen in sport. I was sad to learn the turn of events over the weekend, and I can certainly empathize with his owners and the vet care workers who had been trying to save the horse; it's hard to put a beloved animal down.

But this is nuts (Time$elect, I'm afraid):

"Barbaro’s Desperate Fight for Life Gripped a Nation in Anguish"

Are we as a nation so desperate for heroes, for drama, and for emotional connections that we're "anguished" when a race horse breaks its leg? Or is the media simply the desperate ones here?

And the commentary on NPR this morning, way over the top. I know she's a children's book writer, but is that any excuse to be spoken to as a child while stuck in traffic on the way to work. (And, by the way, pets don't look you in the eye and tell you "it's time to let me go," as Mickle claims. If only they would. The owner and the vet have to make that painful decision without the help of the animal, no matter how anthropomorphized he may be. This I know.)

If anything, the media response to Barbaro's death underscores Stalin's famous claim, that "One death is a tragedy, a million a statistic."

UPDATED to make the opening paragraph read like it wasn't written by a seventh grader.