755 - What would you do?

(This didn't post at midnight like it was supposed to. And I didn't check it this AM.)

Bill McClellan is a columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He is also on a weekly PBS talk show (Donnybrook) here in St. Louis. Although he claims to be a liberal, he's more center than extreme left. I've seen his conservative side come out on the TV show. Here's his column from Monday.

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A liberal went for a walk in Forest Park on Saturday morning. His mind was going a million miles an hour. He was demonizing success and daydreaming about a maximum wage. Why should a CEO of a publicly traded company make more than $1 million a year?

Then he tried to think of cheerier things — world peace, a heftier estate tax, publicly subsidized mass transit, legalized drugs. Oh, yes, those things made him feel better.

He reached the crest of a hill on the south side of Forest Park, between the main entrance to the St. Louis Zoo and the construction at Hampton Avenue. A man was sitting on the curb. He was wearing a helmet. A man and a young woman were hovering over him. A bicycle was lying at his feet.

The liberal approached the threesome. The man had been riding his bicycle and had fallen. He had hit his head. The other two were concerned and were trying to help. Immediately, the liberal thought of a Big Government solution.

"I've got a phone. Do you guys want me to call an ambulance?" he asked.

"I don't know," said the young woman, who turned out to be the wife of the injured man. "Do you think you need an ambulance?" she asked her husband.

He seemed dazed. He was not sure what he needed.

The other man soon left. He must have been a compassionate conservative. He had been willing to help, but then he realized that his help was not needed. Or maybe he did not want to be part of a Big Government solution.

The liberal asked the bicyclist what had happened. "I don't know. I don't remember," the bicyclist said.

"You need an ambulance," the liberal said.

He was thinking about the actress Natasha Richardson. She died last month after a brain hemorrhage caused by blunt impact to her head after falling on a ski slope in Canada. She initially turned down medical treatment.

Then again, a conservative might point out the information came from the drive-by media. Probably 1,000 people fell and hit their heads and were just fine, but leave it to the drive-bys to focus on the one who died. The conservative might argue the real story is about socialized medicine, but the drive-bys try to make it about the unpredictable nature of head injuries. There ought to be a bounty on those drive-bys!

But the liberal thought about Natasha Richardson and he also recalled a woman who died several years ago in Forest Park after hitting her head when she fell while rollerblading, and so without further discussion, he called 911.

Guess what? A recorded voice said something that the liberal couldn't understand. He's almost deaf. Then some kind of lettering came up on the phone. The liberal can't read without his glasses. He handed the phone to the bicyclist's wife. "You call," he said.

She looked frazzled. Her husband was sitting on the curb, bleeding and dazed. She was not sure what to do. And this was the kind of help she was getting? She took the phone and dialed 911. The recorded message said the operators were busy but would be available in a minute. She waited until an operator came on the line. She explained that her husband had fallen off his bicycle.

The liberal did not think she was exhibiting the proper sense of urgency, but perhaps he was thinking that just because it is not his nature to remain calm and collected in an emergency. The operator asked the woman if the injuries were serious enough to require an ambulance. You have to pay for an ambulance, the operator said. "Should we pay for an ambulance?" the woman asked her husband. He shook his head.

So the woman declined an ambulance and handed the phone back to the liberal. She tried to help her husband to his feet, but that did not work. He could not stand up. He plopped back to the curb.

"I don't mean to be pushy, but you really need an ambulance," the liberal said.

He could not stand to think that Big Government was not the solution. And money? That cheered the liberal. Spending other people's money is something he likes to do. Don't worry about money. The taxpayers can pick up the bill. Or maybe a bailout.

More Bill McClellan