You would think that a man dousing himself with gasoline on a downtown Chicago on-ramp during morning rush hour and lighting a match to protest the American invasion and occupation of Iraq would be news, big and immediate news.

Big enough news to get splashed all over the American media on day 1, find a home on talk radio that afternoon, migrate north of the border immediately after that, and hold focus for days. If Kramer going on a racist rant is worth 4 days of national and international news time a guy setting himself on fire should be unusual enough for a least a weeks worth of analysis, don’t you think? It didn’t happen.

Aglow for the crush of morning commuters, his flaming body was supposed to be a call to the nation, a symbol of his rage and discontent with the U.S. war in Iraq.

“Here is the statement I want to make: if I am required to pay for your barbaric war, I choose not to live in your world. I refuse to finance the mass murder of innocent civilians, who did nothing to threaten our country,” he wrote in his suicide note. “… If one death can atone for anything, in any small way, to say to the world: I apologize for what we have done to you, I am ashamed for the mayhem and turmoil caused by my country.”

There was only one problem: No one was listening.

Make sure you read the portions of his suicide note “… If one death can atone for anything, in any small way, to say to the world: I apologize for what we have done to you, I am ashamed for the mayhem and turmoil caused by my country.”.

Try and convince me that that’s not international news on hour 1 given general world opinion and the trouble the US is in in Iraq?

Using the services of Comrade Google (News) and entering the mans name showed that the story was in the state print media on November 8th, it made it out of the state by the 14th, and finally seems to have hit the US national, and international print media, on the 26th - the Australian print media picked it up 13 hours or so ago.

As all bunker regulars know, I am a news/talk radio junkie. The daily listening pattern is quite regular, Canadian (Right)WingNut Lowell Green gets me from 9:00 - 10:00, Glenn Beck gets me from 10:00 - 12:00, Rush Limbaugh gets me from 12:00 - 3:00, Sean Hannity gets me from 3:00 - 4:30 when I leave the office, and Glenn Beck (the TV show) usually gets me for at least another hour in the evening most nights.

It’s possible I suppose, but it seems highly doubtful that if any of them had given any significant time to a flaming protester on the side of a freeway I would have noticed - I didn’t.

So what happened? Why was this not bigger news at the time than it was?