Cheney accidentally shoots fellow hunter

[J-Mann]

Dick Cheney's not the only lousy shot
The hyperbolic criticism aimed at the vice president for his accident is off target, and misses the bigger game

Thursday, February 16, 2006
The Oregonian

The bird dogs finally flushed Dick Cheney. After holding for days in the thick cover of Washington, his favored habitat, the vice president burst into the air Wednesday on Fox News Channel and took responsibility for accidentally shooting his quail hunting buddy, Harry Whittington.

Let him go. We have all reached our bag limit on Dick Cheney. The late-night monologues were hilarious. The Elmer Fudd cartoons were a hoot. The earnest hunter safety columns were a useful public service.

Now it is just overkill. The pundits have been beating this brush for days now, searching for a covey of metaphors and deep symbolic and political meaning in a routine hunting accident. In fact, nothing's here but a hunter, a vice president, who very nearly accidentally killed a close friend.

Yes, Cheney and his staff should have made public the news of the accident much sooner. Yes, the White House crudely tried to shift some of the blame to the old man lying in a Texas hospital with birdshot rattling around in his chest. And yes, Cheney is weirdly secretive and paranoid about the media -- traits surely reinforced by the hoopla during the past three days.

But Cheney has taken responsibility. He said Wednesday, "You can't blame anyone else. I'm the guy who pulled the trigger and shot my friend." Cheney said he saw Whittington fall when he fired. "The image of him falling is something I'll never ever be able to get out of my mind."

Can we call off the dogs now?

By the way, while the nation has collectively spent the past few days with its foot up on a pickup bumper chewing the fat about Dick Cheney's shot heard 'round the world, some bigger game has loped by.

On Wednesday, while everyone was dissecting the vice president's statement of regret for wounding his friend, Congress released a thick report demonstrating that failures by the Bush administration contributed to much of the death and suffering in Hurricane Katrina.

Now, there's a place to hunt.

[J-Mann]

Imagine if this was John Kerry. His approval rating would be about 5% after the media was done with him.

But it's not John Kerry.  It's Dick Cheney, whose own approval rating isn't very damn high, and it has likely taken a further beating over this.

I'm not going to play "Pretend what the media would do with so-and-so" ... I think it was a legitimate accident, the media has made their points about the administration's sluggishness to inform the public (on this and other matters), and the only people it should be a big deal to are Dick Cheney and the guy laying in a hospital bed with buckshot floating around in him.

Other than trite comparisons to the war or administration secrecy, why would this be of much concern to anyone else?  The media has made their point; they wanted (and needed) to know.  Dick Cheney apologized (granted, some of you would rather he commit sepuku in an act of contrition, but that's unlikely) and took full responsibility.  What more do you all want?

[J-Mann]

Imagine if this was John Kerry. His approval rating would be about 5% after the media was done with him.

But it's not John Kerry.  It's Dick Cheney, whose own approval rating isn't very damn high, and it has likely taken a further beating over this.

I'm not going to play "Pretend what the media would do with so-and-so" ... I think it was a legitimate accident, the media has made their points about the administration's sluggishness to inform the public (on this and other matters), and the only people it should be a big deal to are Dick Cheney and the guy laying in a hospital bed with buckshot floating around in him.

Other than trite comparisons to the war or administration secrecy, why would this be of much concern to anyone else?  The media has made their point; they wanted (and needed) to know.  Dick Cheney apologized (granted, some of you would rather he commit sepuku in an act of contrition, but that's unlikely) and took full responsibility.  What more do you all want?

I want Cheney to be treated the way a Democrat would be treated.

And where is the precedent for a Democrat accidentally shooting someone while bird hunting?

[J-Mann]

I want Cheney to be treated the way a Democrat would be treated.

And where is the precedent for a Democrat accidentally shooting someone while bird hunting?

Just look at the way Democrats are treated. For instance this is a zillion times more important than that Sandy Burger thing.

... and even in that, I don't think this is important in the least, except to the people it directly affected.

I know what you're saying.  If a Democrat combs his hair differently, conservatives are up-in-arms about it, and their "furor" gives the media some fat to chew on.  As long as the conservatives keep it up, the media keeps covering the story and the Democrat continues to get negative exposure.  What could be a small detail turns out to be a huge story just because of the perpetuation of "outrage."  That doesn't make it right.

The points have been made.  Dick Cheney is not, at least publicly, effective whatsoever.  He's lampooned and ridiculed and disrespected on a pretty wide scale, and his accident has been front-page political news all over the country since Monday; all the while, there are legitimate issues to be discussed, but they're ignored in favor of this.  Cheney can't do much more than he already has done, and the media and Cheney's critics need to know when to stop beating a dead horse.  It's not right, no matter who does it.

[J-Mann]

I want Cheney to be treated the way a Democrat would be treated.

And where is the precedent for a Democrat accidentally shooting someone while bird hunting?

Just look at the way Democrats are treated. For instance this is a zillion times more important than that Sandy Burger thing.

... and even in that, I don't think this is important in the least, except to the people it directly affected.

Reminds me of a certain blow job.

I won't disagree with that at all.  In fact, the situation is somewhat similar -- Cheney and Clinton were both less than forthcoming about their respective events, which got them in deeper and deeper trouble.  Clinton's was a private matter; Cheney should have been immediately forthcoming (though I do see the logic in waiting till a local paper could cover the full story -- stories with "details forthcoming" could have caused a lot of unnecessary speculation).

I just think it's over, it's been apologized for, and I hope I don't have to read one more New York Times editorial on the issue.  It's dumb to harp on it.

[J-Mann]

Anyways, I don't know why people don't trust DailyKos. Without blogs like them you would have never heard of Paul Hackett, who seems to be popular on this board.

The same reason that you presumably wouldn't trust the Drudge Report, or NewsMax or Rush Limbaugh.  I won't deny that there is perfectly factual information presented at DailyKos; I take issue with how it's written, which is by left-wing writers putting a left-wing spin on issues.  While the "facts" presented on DailyKos might make perfect sense to you, Jfern, they're nothing but left-wing propaganda to others, no different than Fox News is for conservatives who swear it is unbiased.

I also can't deny the growing influence of blogs.  They're popular, and the reason they're so popular is precisely because they present the news with a certain spin.  Conservatives will flock to conservative blogs and liberals will flock to liberal ones not because they're interested in looking at straight facts, reading varying opinions and deciding for themselves what to believe; they'll turn to this sort of information source because it makes them comfortable.