What is the big deal? I bet the same thing happened a dozen times this weekend. If it had not have been the Vice-President involved, no one would have ever heard about it. Talk about a tempest in a teapot, or making a mountain out of a mole hill.
Even worse than the hysterical coverage of the accident itself is the outraged demands of the media to know why they weren't informed at once. What would they have done, broken into normal TV with the report? A special edition of the newspapers? What did the White House supposedly have to gain by the delay? Since when does the media have the right to be instantly informed about ANYTHING, let alone an aspect of the Vice-President's private life? If I had been Scott McClellan I would have told the media to get a life!
Update: Many on the Left are calling on Vice-President Cheney to resign. You know what? So am I. That way President Bush can appoint Secretary of State Rice to replace him.
3 comments:
Let's be fair about this: If the VP had been a Democrat, the Republicans and the Right would be having a field day with this as well.
Hey Gahrie it's Ed I thought I'd jump in. As usual I think you are wrong. It's not to much to ask that when the VP shoots someone that they tell us. I don't think anyone thinks he saw Aaron Burr or anything...but it's a problem a large amount of us moderate Rebublicans have with this administration...a sence of apathy toward what the people thing about the administration. It's not a left/right thing. It's a "come on just let us know you shot someone." ...but what do I know?
anonymous Ed:
And "they" did tell "us." The problem is that "they" didn't tell the "us" in the Washington press corps. This incident was, at best, a careless accident on the part of Cheney (and arguably his friend the "victim," though Cheney in typical gentlemanly fashion took full responsibility for it in his Hume interview yesterday); where was the urgency to get it out nationally? The national coverage was bound to happen; why not treat the whole thing proportionately, as they actually did, by having it "break" locally?
What's occurred to me quite a few times since the Monday press conference foolishness was that if that Corpus reporter had been really hungry, she would've been glued to her police scanner, or at least have established some kind of two-martini relationship with the ER staff and received a phone call when Whittington was brought in. Instead, she "broke" the story by picking up her phone when Katherine Anderson called it in to her paper.
(I don't fault the reporter, BTW. She was behaving like a normal human being.)
gs, I'm going to guess you either don't live in Texas or don't hunt, or both? The Texas poh-lice were satisfied that there was no wrongdoing, and believe it or not, they probably would've come to that conclusion even if it'd been John Q. Public rather than Dick Cheney who pulled the trigger - it's that kind of place, where (except in Austin) people still recognize an accident when they see one, and use a certain amount of judgment and a sense of proportion.
And fred, you may be right, except that with the press corps essentially on the side of the Democrat VP (not saying the press gives Democrats a complete free pass, but they do seem to softball them and really, quite seldom report on unfounded allegations of criminality against them), and still controlling the national public agenda to a great degree, it would've been up to the blogs and talk radio to have that field day.
Post a Comment