Bin Fibbin’

We got him. I’m glad.

As the details of Bin Laden’s death started to come forward, something didn’t smell right. Nope, I’m not one of those who thinks Osama’s not actually dead. In fact, I don’t want to see photos or video or any other proof than we’ve seen already. I’m good. He’s dead. Got it.

There were several claims that I didn’t buy into from the get go. They just seemed too fantastic.

He used his wife as a human shield!!!

This makes him look like a coward and belittles him as a man. It just fits the narrative too perfect. Why not say that he was playing with Barbies and listening to Hannah Montana when the Seals invaded his transgendered slumber party?

He had a gun and was going all Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?

Err…maybe he didn’t have a gun after all.

I’m not trying to defend Bin Laden or give him credit in any way, but I’m asking to be told the truth. We long for simple, clean-cut narratives so much that we create them when they do not exist. (I’m looking at you Greg Mortenson.) It’s almost like we are utterly incapable of understanding a story more complex than an old western where the bad guy wears a black hat and the good guy wears a white one.

Navy Seals put a bullet through the brain of the boogieman. It’s an accomplishment. Why do we need to sully the accomplishment with little white lies to make the story better? We probably won’t know what went down in that compound for a long, long time. Yet we are lapping up the details without question as if we’ve never been fed a spoonful of crap before (Pat Tillman, Jessica Lynch). And soon as we realize what we swallowed, we shake our heads and say, “You know, that didn’t taste right.”