Another Black Eye For The MSM

SCROLL DOWN FOR DICK CHENEY'S INTERVIEW WITH FOX' BRIT HUME

I purposely stayed away from the story about the accidental shooting of Texas attorney Harry Whittington by Vice President Dick Cheney, but after three days of reading so much garbage coming from the MSM and the liberal Blogosphere I would just simply like to say "Enough already!"

Harry Whittington, suffered a mild heart attack caused by bird shot moving and lodging into his heart. Is anything funny about that? Instead of praying for him and his family the leftie thugs lay into the Administration as if though this was a Chappaquiddick conspiracy orchestrated by Senator Kennedy himself, and the Vice President should be indicted for murder.

What is the mileage in this, other that making the MSM look absolutely stupid. The Vice President has an accident and it turns into an international incident making the American liberals the laughing stock of America and the world, and not even achieving what seems to be the intended degradation of the entire Administration.

So now the latest on the pathetic smear campaign is the earth shattering revelation that The Vice President did not have the proper hunting credentials, i.e. a $7 stamp required for a bird hunting licence. Really. Impeach him I say, or better still, behead him a la our friends from the religion of peace.

Hugh Hewitt has it absolutely right:

The MSM is unhinged, a victim of its Bush hatred, which includes of course hatred of Cheney. The idea that failure to tell the White House press corps of a hunting accident for 14 hours is in anyway similar to leaving a woman to die in a submerged car while fleeing the scene or the cover-up of Watergate is just nuts.

And the American people know it.

What the Beltway gang seems not to understand is that most of America is laughing at them, not frowning at the Veep. There isn't a single fact we haven't been told, and we don't much care if the pampered poobahs of the press got a heads up after four or 14 hours.

There isn't a cover-up, there isn't an issue, there isn't even a controversy.

There is, however, a spectacle, and it is another black eye for the MSM.

The Cheney story will not work out the way the MSM wants it to because there is a huge push-back from non-left wing news sources who have already been playing the audio from the press briefings which embarasses the Gregorys of the world.

Will legacy media ever figure this out?

Anyone need some ice?

Perhaps Peter Daou @ Salon does, who has challenged the right side of the Blogosphere including myself, "to prove that the MSM is hyping the Cheney scandal". Then he proceeds to say that "This ties in - albeit tangentially - to a recent post by Glenn Greenwald about the Bush-cultism masquerading as conservatism on rightwing blogs", which as you know was a discussion started between myself and Glenn, whereupon Glenn just as his counterpart Daou on the left does, conveniently steered the subject to where he wished it to go, Does it not remind you of Glenn's : "I want to leave the personal issues to the side and examine a few of the substantive issues raised (unintentionally) by Alexandra’s post."  So now one is 'off on a tangent' and the other is whoops 'unintentional', I mean really. Talk about see-through......I can see your boxer shorts Peter, the ones with the big teddy bears and rattles! O.K. don't get upset with me now, they are cool, they really are....

Peter Daou repeats the 'off on a tangent' post @ Huffington Post. and Arianna has her usual hyperventilating fit, with the off the cuff  cheap shot insult about the "Dead Eye Dick Cheney" and the lies, lies meme. How she has the gall to insult anyone with the dreadful face lift she must have recently had, which gave me quite a shock last time I saw her. What is it with beautiful women like Arianna, who overnight become frightening Wildenstein creatures, very disturbing, but most important of all should serve as an automatic silencer to any personal attacks on anyone else's appearance.

Daily Kos continues along the same lines, on the famous liberal never ending tangent:

"The Cheney shooting story isn't about to die down. I predict that the press is going to run with this story for days, if not weeks -- and it has very little to do with the possibility of Cheney's being drunk, or with the 18 hour delay, or anything else. And this story is going to be much bigger than what we've seen so far in the White House Press Briefings. It's because this story is a perfect metaphor for this administration's foreign and domestic policy."

Marshall Whittman:

While Greenwald suggests that "loyalty" to Bush is the requirement for the right, the standard to to be a member in good standing of the liberal/left community is hatred of Bush. The Moose opposes most of the economic agenda of the Administration. However, he critically supports the President in the war on terror - including the NSA program. This has won the Moose the visceral opprobrium of the left. Because in the left wing universe, one must oppose everything the President supports. The truth is that a good part of the left believes that George W. Bush is a greater threat to America than Osama bin Laden.

Tony Blankley also reviews the proceedings in "The shooting party."  Blankley writes:

In the absence of any pressing news these days -- other than Iran's nuclear weapons development crisis, the election of Hamas terrorists in Palestine, ongoing worldwide Muslim riots and killing in reaction to a cartoon, Al Gore's near sedition while speaking in Saudi Arabia, the turning over of our East Coast ports to be managed by a United Arab Emirates firm, the criminal leaking of vital NSA secrets to the New York Times, Mexican military incursions across our southern border, the Iraqi crisis, Congress's refusal to deal with the developing financial collapse of Social Security and Medicare, inter alia -- the White House press corp has exploded in righteous fury over the question of the vice president's little shooting party last weekend.

Did they miss anything out?

The Wall Street Journal provides an assist to its distinguished colleagues in the MSM by identifying some remaining areas of inquiry: "Cheney's coverup."

Who are the Democrats to criticize? Hillary especially! [It looks like Hillary didn't take Michelle Malkin's advice]

Democrats were the ones who tried to suppress the Barrett Report because of its potential damage to the Clintons.

We all know John Kerry was not telling us the truth about his service in Vietnam... it took a book to force him to reveal that parts of his fabricated version of his service were indeed fabrications.

Democrats have been anything but forthcoming when it comes to their own ethics violations and corruption.

I'm not going to waste time listing Democrat scandals and incidents that they have been far from forthcoming over. It's time for the Democrats to stop pretending they're so
innocent and pure.

Michelle Malkin:

My syndicated column today contrasts the clowns of the American media hyperventilating about the Cheney shooting accident with the plight of journalists facing retribution for taking a stand on the Cartoon Jihad.

Brit Hume to interview Dick Cheney this evening on Special Report @ 6pm. Eastern.

Glenn Reynolds points us to Howard Kurtz who has an excellent not to be missed Cheney roundup together with a record of events, and comments that the story is getting Natalee Holloway level coverage. Heh. (don't miss the talented Beth telling it like it is)

UPDATE: Fox's Brit Hume Interview with Dick Cheney (read the transcript @ Fox News):

Cheney was soft-spoken and somber during the interview.

"The image of him falling is something I'll never ever be able to get out of my mind," Cheney said. "I fired, and there's Harry falling. It was, I'd have to say, one of the worst days of my life at that moment."

"You can talk about all of the other conditions that exist at the time but that's the bottom line and — it was not Harry's fault," he said. "You can't blame anybody else. I'm the guy who pulled the trigger and shot my friend."

"I ran over to him," Cheney said. "He was laying there on his back, obviously, bleeding. You could see where the shot struck him."

He said he has no idea if he hit a bird because he was focused on Whittington.

"I said, `Harry, I had no idea you were there.' He didn't respond," Cheney said.

Cheney has been roundly criticized for failing to tell the public about the accident until the next day. He said he thought it made sense to let the owner of the ranch where it happened reveal the accident on the local newspaper's Web site Sunday morning.

"I thought that was the right call," Cheney said. "I still do."

Cheney said he agreed that ranch owner Katharine Armstrong should make the story public, because she was an eyewitness, because she grew up on the ranch and because she is "an acknowledged expert in all of this" as a past head of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. He also agreed with her decision to choose the local newspaper as the way to get the news out.

"I thought that made good sense because you can get as accurate a story as possible from somebody who knew and understood hunting and then it would immediately go up to the wires and be posted on the Web site, which is the way it went out and I thought that was the right call," Cheney said.

"What do you think now?" he was asked.

"I still do," Cheney responded. "The accuracy was enormously important. I had no press person with me."

Armstrong told reporters that Whittington made a mistake by not announcing himself as he returned to the hunting line after breaking off to retrieve a downed bird. But Cheney, an avid and longtime hunter, said Whittington was not to blame.

"Well, my first reaction, Brit, was not to think I needed to call the press. My first reaction is my friend Harry has been shot. And we've got to take care of him. That evening, there were other considerations, we need to make sure his family was taken care of, his wife was on the ranch. She wasn't with us when it happened. We got her hooked up with the ambulance on way to the hospital with Harry. He has grown children. We wanted to make sure they were notified so they didn't hear on television that their father had been shot. That was important, too.

We also didn't know what the outcome here was going to be. We didn't know for sure what kind of shape Harry was in. We had preliminary reports but — they wanted to do a CAT scan, for example, to see how — whether or not there was any internal damage. Whether or not any vital organ had been penetrated by any of the shot. We did not know until Sunday morning that we could be confident that everything was probably going to be OK.

But I'm not going to be, obviously, totally at ease until he's home. He's going to be in the hospital apparently for a few more days, and the problem obviously is that there's always a possibility of complications in somebody who's 78, 79 years old. But he's a great man. He's in great shape, a good friend and, you know, our thoughts and prayers go out to him and his family."

Ian Schwartz has the video.

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Comments

[the doc]

It's nice to see you talk with such authority, but in fact you know nothing more than anyone else and that is precious little. You have no real idea as to why they waited so long to disclose this incident, or if Cheney was or wasn't drinking heavily. The fact is that you and everyone else don't know shit, yet you write as though you are the world's gift to politics. Get real, baby...

[Brainster]

I was amused at Daou's post challenging the right-wing blogosphere. Did you notice that whenever the media rewrote/edited a story to favor the Republicans, he griped about the change, but whenever it was rewritten/edited to favor the Democrats, he griped that they didn't get it right in the first place.

I also followed the Greenwald saga; what a hoot that was! He's obviously fairly smart, but blinded by Bush hatred.

[Darrell]

They've already made the Halliburton connection in the MSM. The woman that owned the ranch is the daughter of a Halliburton exec.

[RL]

as we all know, President Bush and Halliburton are behind
this, "vast right wing conspiracy".

coloringthenews.com
mediaresearch.org
consumerfreedom.com

"Half the lies they tell about me aren't true."
Yogi Berra

: )

[jess1dering]

Hello Alexandra and friends ! A very good site to cite for proof of left leaning media bias is www.aim.org. It's a grass roots, non-profit citizens group and from all appearances, it's pretty darned objective. They even include research by the ACLU. What honest liberal can argue with the ACLU ?? Well , even the ACLU recognizes lefty bias in the MSM. Just go to the site and type in " left-leaning media bias " I thought the article, " Yes Virginia, There Is Media Bias " was fun. That's where you'll find the ACLU acknowledgement. Hope you like it !

[Darrell]

Proof they want? View MSM tapes from 2000-present. See also everything published in the NYT, WaPo, Boston Globe, Chgo Tribune, LA Times... If the press wasn't biased, they would shoot down the "Bush Lied" meme everytime someone tried to use it. There are tapes of EVERYONE in the previous administration saying the EXACT SAME THING! Sorry for raising my voice!

How about their current campaign? BS/BS...Bird Shot Bull Sh?t...

[MT]

Is it just me, or is it mostly Republicans and Conservatives who aren't innocent until proven guilty? It's like the words "impeachment" and "resignation"...and even "unintentional manslaughter" are spurting through cracks in the decency levee - ready to indict him at the first opportunity.

Cool site. Nice work. I'll stay in touch.

MT

[George Berryman]

The MSM is unhinged, a victim of its Bush hatred, which includes of course hatred of Cheney.... and the American people know it.

Hey there Alexandra!

You'll get a kick out of this. During the evening coverage of Monday's temper tantrum from the White House press corps my mother's cousin was watching it on television with her thirteen-year old son. Ma's cousin began to complain a bit, then her young son said: "Aww, mom, everyone knows they're just a bunch of liberals."

That from a thirteen-year old kid. I tell you there is hope yet for our future! ;)

[Stefan]

You gotta love the “Cheney was trying to kill Harry Whittington” conspiracy theory people. The VP of the United States wants to kill his friend so he plots to shoot him himself with bird-shot and make it look like an accident? This is the best plan the great, evil mastermind, who pulls all the strings and moves all the levers behind every geo-political event, could come up with? So silly you can’t make it up.

[Alexandra]

I just posted an update, with a challenge to myself, Powerline, Blogs For Bush and the rest of the right side of the Blogosphere, from Peter Daou @ Salon. He asks us to prove the MSM's bias towards the Administration. Read it, it's funny...Anti Media will have a good laugh at that one. Heh.

[Huan]

If the reporters had any sense, they would have done a little investigation, or at least peruse a medical dictionary/encyclopedia and realize that the guy did NOT have any heart attack at all, not even a mild one.

The whole thing is silly.

[Liquid]

Well...its just like when they made the big fuss about the window of time when Bush was first told about 911. Maybe they are never going to understand that we all react differently to trauma and that sometimes its good to be STILL and THINK before one acts! I have no problem with Cheney taking the time to get the facts on this before giving an interview. We were not involved in the first few hours being informed by the doctors and the lawyers and we can see how in a few days that the body can go from one crisis to another. I think Cheney is shaken and upset by the whole disaster. I feel alot of empathy for him at this time and I pray that his friend recovers soon without any complication.

[Paul of York]

Normally, these idiots panting after VP Cheney would be in a padded room wearing strait jackets to keep from this continually smacking themselves in the face and harming themselves. Normally. However, being the self-appointed protector of anti-ness regarding the Republicans, no one knows how to put them there, leaving many of us to shake our heads in the do they really expect us to be the blind conspirators in their stupidity?

They are the circus and don't know it or don't care. Trouble is, they can still harm people and in that they try really, really hard.

[Defector]

Let it come
Let these insane criticisms of Cheney and calls for his removal from power rain down on us. The more they do, the deeper and bigger the MSM digs its grave

[liquid]

The MSM is always biting at their enemy's heels and its much more fun for them to stay on those stories that they can embelish instead of the real news of the day. To actually present the truth is boring to them. It's just a blast IMHO, the MSM is showing a trait that many teenagers deal with today. They want things now instantly and they want things faster than yesterday despite the consequences and also in their self importance, they will nag till they get attention and will sometimes even lie just because it sells or is easier to stir the pot by making jokes instead of showing compassion. I don't mean any disrespect to the youth of today by comparing them to the MSM...but I do so because at times I feel just like our youth, that the brains of the MSM are not quite fully developed yet.

[Darrell]

Time to re-classify news gathering and distribution under "maufacturing" in the SIC classification system. At least that way the nation benefits somewhat.

I remember when the MSM went crazy when Harry Reid withheld news of his stroke from them for three days. Wait. The delay occurred: The MSM said nothing. What did they know and when did they know it? With the Dems the answers are nothing and always.

[RL]

Alexandra,

i think that at this juncture, it is very safe to say that
the majority of the msm are a bunch of radiclib & hypocritical,

"Pusillanimous pussyfoots"

and

"Hopeless, hysterical, hypochondriacs of history".

Quelle bande d'idiots !

[John A]

Gee, a while back I tripped on a curbstone: looks like I should have notified the press by cell phone while on the way to the emergency area of the hospital.

Not that the EMT would let me: something about sensitive equipment...

[RL]

Bonjour Alexandra Beautiful,

"pampered poobahs of the press"
(heh, heh : )

kinda sounds like,

"nattering naybobs of negativity"

and

"an effete corps of impudent snobs."

"It's deja-vu all over again."
Yogi Berra

: )