Yo ho ho?

I'm happy that everything turned out more or less all right for Captain Phillips and President Obama this week -- the fewer Americans lost at sea due to pirate attacks the better, I suppose. 

I'm less happy about the way the media has portrayed the story.  To me, there has been a troubling lack of coverage about the Somali pirates themselves, and the socio-political-economic forces that required them to resort to a life of piracy.

What man, in the 21st century, wakes up one morning and says "By gum, a pirates life for me!" No man does this, because, as Dryden said, the life of a pirate is nasty, brutish and short.  That was true in the 1600s and it's just as true now.  Certainly, behind all the crowing and breast-beating surrounding the rescue of Captain Phillips, there is a tragic story to be told about the desperate men whose lives gave them no choice but the life of an outcast.

For, in our illegal times, who is truly the pirate and who is truly the pirated?  Aren't the Wall Street bankers who pillaged and plundered our economy the real pirates?  How is it that these men, this team of no-hope Somali sailors, are killed for their crimes while the pirates of Wall Street continue to profit indecently?