Cheney Shooting = Dean Scream?
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in General Politics
You know, I was just considering this today and given all the comedic hay that’s been made over Cheney shooting somebody in the FACE (!), my thoughts quickly turned to Iowa…2004…
It was the night of caucuses, and Dean was not going to win. That was painfully clear. And yes, I was there.
Along with all of his other supporters, I was packed into a small ballroom on the outskirts of Des Moines. Dean’s campaign effort in Iowa was called The Perfect Storm, and none of us knew how perfect that terminology would be until after we shuffled out of that noisy ballrom and back to our respective election crash pads to find the Drudge Report’s audio of Dean’s crippling yell. And while we were sharing caucus day stories, I can only guess that we were all wondering what was to come next. After all, had the grand experiment failed? All that hard work down the drain? It couldn’t possibly be?
And to be sure, no network thought Dean would fail either. How can I say this? Well, all the top political pundits were there too. Tucker Carlson, Paul Begala, etc, etc, etc. I was even interviewed by a writer from the New Yorker, whose name currently escapes me. Sure, the mood was upbeat, but whether we wanted to admit it or not, something deep down in us all shouted, “Oh $#!+!” It wasn’t until soon after our fearless leader took the stage that we would realize the end to our collective hopes and dreams.
So turning to the Cheney shooting, perhaps this is a political disaster for him. Perhaps this is his “I Have A Scream” moment. After all, the amount of jokes that are now being made at his expensive are massive and broad, much like the Dean fallout. And he was drinking. And he waited perhaps too long till he shared the information. Frankly, it feels like the “ands” outweigh the “buts” right now, and somehow I think that’s significant, regardless of what either side says.
And yes, it’s odd that he would give a small town reporter this information first, while previously leaking all sorts of (de)classified information to MSM reporters so the administration’s pre-Iraq war case would prove stronger. Cheney and company know all too well what channels to push information through for maximum effect, so I find these current explanations supporting Cheney’s actions sorely lacking.
Ultimately, I think Cheney will suffer these verbal slings and arrows and emerge fairly unscathed. But there’s always a chance that this incident could ultimately be a much longer slog than he had first anticipated, and all because he underestimated the power of “The Scream.”
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February 19th, 2006 at 10:04 pm
If Cheney were in the middle of a campaign, this might have hurt him. Given that he isn’t I think there’s at most another week or so until it moves off the radar. People will remember if you ask them, but it isn’t going to dominate people’s view of the administration. Giving all the other crap going on in this world, it pains me that Russert could designate a half hour to this crap - I think most people agree. Once you move beyond the late night jokes, there isn’t much to say.
February 20th, 2006 at 9:39 am
Any of this might matter IF either Bush or Cheney were going to be on the next ticket.
Why are you folks still trying to run against them?
February 20th, 2006 at 12:36 pm
“Why are you folks still trying to run against them?” Because they didn’t win to begin with LF and so it is like the basketball player that doesn’t hit the last second shot to win the game and so they stay in the gym for hours after the game, trying to hit that shot, replaying the moment over and over and over and over again his head until….
February 20th, 2006 at 2:01 pm
There’s a more practical reason to continue to run against them. As long as the administration is considered to be strong and popular, Republicans (and some Dems) in Congress will be afraid to go against them. The sudden independence of some Republican congressmen didn’t come about because they finally grew a pair. It happened because Bush’s poll numbers plummetted. The weaker Bush is, the more likely that moderate Republicans will feel free to speak up, and the harder it will be for Frist and Hastert to keep everyone in line. How bad is it when the White House can’t even offer to have the President visit a member’s district to campaign for him, because no one wants to be associated with the guy?
February 20th, 2006 at 2:16 pm
I think you’re all discounting Cheney’s influence on the 2006 elections. Cheney’s mishap could potentially hinder Republicans because it paints the whole party as having poor judgement. And I’m not saying that’s a fair assesment, but everybody thought Dean was insane after the scream. Wooden? Yes. Overextended? Yes. Crazy? No.
February 20th, 2006 at 4:58 pm
The only party shown to have poor judgement here is the media lapdogs and their inane lefty buddies.
Cheney had an accident, big frickin’ deal.
The MSM, for all its whining about 20 freakin’ hours had a front page news story about it every day of last week, its much ado about nothing.
To top it off, the MSM still FAILS to report on Al Gore’s soujourn to Saudi Arabia where he said we were indiscriminately rounding up Arabs and perpetrating “horrible abuses”. This was last week. Where’s the outrage, where’s the MSM complaining about this horrible 168 hour delay in the story! “People’s right to know” my foot. The MSM is a bunch of idiotic crybabies who didn’t get the outcome they wanted. Cheney’s accident isn’t going to hurt anyone who votes who has semblance of mind and rational thinking ability.
February 20th, 2006 at 5:38 pm
“…anyone who votes who has semblance of mind and rational thinking ability.” — This is a minority of the electorate Brian. I love my wife, but the woman votes on looks, like a LOT of PEOPLE. She doesn’t want the U.S. represented by an ugly person. Fair enough. She was pissed at GW for not nominating a woman to SCOTUS — she could care less about the “woman’s” judicial philosophy. In short, my wife is a typical “moderate”. (Genetically she is a conservative because she is German, but she is trendy and liberals throw better parties so…) Anyway, my point being is that I think Justin is right. This can be used by the Dems as a nice little campaign allegory for the uncompassionate bastard FACE shooting Republicans. But the Dems will screw it up, by taking it and themselves too seriously and coming across as disingenious a-holes to people like my wife. The Dems should honestly look at the MSM and ask, “With friends like these, who needs enemies.”
February 20th, 2006 at 6:13 pm
Brian…don’t hold back…tell us how you really feel.
Uh, we are. Apparently you’re not familiar with our enemy combatant policy or our policy of rendition? And by the way, who do you think we’re filling our secret prisons with, WASPs?
Obviously you’re angry about this, but to call the MSM idiots accomplishes exactly what?
They very well could.
February 20th, 2006 at 9:02 pm
“Uh, we are. Apparently you’re not familiar with our enemy combatant policy or our policy of rendition? And by the way, who do you think we’re filling our secret prisons with, WASPs?”
What I was attempting to do was use the illogic of the media in that even though the story happened, noones crying bloody murder that it wasn’t in the NYT the day after. After all, why wasn’t Gore in the news, I mean, arguably this story is worse for the Bush Administration then Cheney’s hunting accident. Its just… stupid. And its real. I mean, come on media dudes, Al Gore told the Saudi’s America is commiting evil atrocities indiscriminately in a time of war, why on earth wouldn’t you post this obvious truth?
Of course you realize, the torture and rendition deal seems a bit unsubstantiated, I really have no reason to believe a media that picks and chooses what stories to run based solely on how bad it makes Bush, conservatives, or Christians look. To top it off, the same morons screaming “people’s right to know!” about a hunting accident completely unrelated to Cheney’s VP duties won’t show cartoons causing riots with real effects on the world that look like the stuff you find in a bowl of lucky charms.
It is, well… ridiculous. Idiotic. The media aren’t idiots because they are decidedly left wing, the media are idiots because they can’t even run the stories most likely to hurt the Bush administration and instead focus on non-stories that have absolutely no effect on anyone but Cheney, Mr. Whittington, The Kenedy County Police, and the ranch owner. Besides, the media won’t listen to me anyway, so who cares what invective I use to describe them.
February 20th, 2006 at 10:49 pm
Brian, torture has happened and is still an official administration policy be default when they say that they want the CIA to have any means open to get information. The same with rendition. We can kidnap anybody in the world and hold them indefinitely if we suspect they’re a terrorist or have ties to terrorism. These are known policies that have been voiced by the administration.
Concerning the cartoons, the reason they’re not showing them is the same reason why they wouldn’t show a collection of cartoons depicting Jesus in an incredibly inflammatory way. Even other papers in Denmark didn’t run the cartoons because just because you CAN print something doesn’t mean you should print them. And besides, if people want to find them, they can ALL over the internet. It has nothing to do with courage or being left-wing or right-wing. It has to do with respect. And no, I’m not speaking about respect for the radicals who are rioting. I’m talking about the moderate Muslim majority in this country and elsewhere that are offended by these cartoons.
February 21st, 2006 at 1:04 am
Brian, the media did cover Al Gore’s speech. A quick Google search shows coverge by Associated Press, CBS, ABC, Baltimore Sun and a host of others. This is just at a quick glance. So your “168 hour” comment is completely off base. You seem to be offended that they didn’t take a partisan stand and print continuous criticism of Gore. I was going to comment on the rest of your posts, but in reviewing them I realized that the fact that you were wrong about the coverage of Gore’s speech pretty much obliterated the rest of your points.
And whether the press does or doesn’t cover a story doesn’t affect the newsworthiness of a completely unrelated story.
And since you seem to take it as an article of faith that the media hates Bush and supports the left, I’d be interested in some examples. The Right has been saying this for so long they take it as a given that doesn’t even have to be supported. Well, I don’t believe it, so please provide some specifics.
February 21st, 2006 at 2:19 am
Oh, they have a few examples here and there. But that doesn’t make it a sistemic attempt by the media in general. All it is is a meme, and a very successful one at that. But that’s just the partisan game we keep playing back and forth. I, for one, wish that everybody would just drop the whole “liberal” media thing once and for all and focus on the facts. Because honestly, will we ever have a real debate if one side is constantly shouting, “Liberal media!” Of course not.
Ugh.
February 21st, 2006 at 5:01 am
“Concerning the cartoons, the reason they’re not showing them is the same reason why they wouldn’t show a collection of cartoons depicting Jesus in an incredibly inflammatory way.”
Piss Christ and Dung Mary got national acclaim as “Art”. Cartoons that look like a bowl of lucky charms got censored for “not being religiously sensitive”. ZOMG, Mohammed(or really, any Muslim with a beard) with a bomb turban, so offensive! You’ll excuse me if I don’t think thats an accurate depiction of the extremist whackjobs that have hijacked Islam and crashed it into common sense tower, destroying the structure.
“Even other papers in Denmark didn’t run the cartoons because just because you CAN print something doesn’t mean you should print them.”
And other members of the media don’t cover every story important to the country, but as you just finished telling me, just because other sources do or do not cover a given event is no indicator of that event’s legitimacy and has no implication of bias for any given media outlet.
“And besides, if people want to find them, they can ALL over the internet. It has nothing to do with courage or being left-wing or right-wing. It has to do with respect. And no, I’m not speaking about respect for the radicals who are rioting. I’m talking about the moderate Muslim majority in this country and elsewhere that are offended by these cartoons.”
Oh please, satirical cartoons basically exist to offend. I haven’t met a satirical cartoon of Bush that the paper wouldn’t print, or a satirical cartoon of christians or any even presumed to be a member of that damn religious right. I don’t think I’ve seen an anti-jewish cartoon in the paper, but the arabs seem to have no trouble publishing those on a regular basis. Where is our condemnation of arab newspapers, where is the outrage that they are improperly using a democratic institution? Nowhere, because the media at present is spineless. These days you get more Commentary (and News) then News and Commentary.
Some examples you ask? Cheney’s overblown hunting accident, a refusal to print the cartoons because of sensitivity when no such sensitivity is applied to other groups, “news” that reads like an op-ed. There is a systemic headnod to liberals within the “acredited” printed media indicative of a groupthink mentality. There is not a single good story about Bush or Iraq and usually there are a litany of things Bush is supposedly cutting that are not cuts at all. The paper provides no context and is basically a rubber-stamp for the Democratic party.
Citizen Cheney doesn’t tell us “fast enough” and Lucky Charms cartoons not running are simply the most recent examples of the sort of headnodding that goes on. I’m sorry, but where was Clinton’s call to the press after he screwed Lewinsky? Why wasn’t the whole media alerted the next day, why the horrible delay! Alec Baldwin calls Dick Cheney a terrorist, where’s the week of front page news coverage for yet another non-story? Planned Parenthood Golden Gate created a video animation last August depicting pro-lifers getting drowned and blown up (for political disagreement) and the “superhero” undermining the idea of first amendment rights. 6 Months and not a blip from the mainstream media.(http://www.courtzero.org/sanfranpp.wmv for link).
The media, much like an alchoholic, will never get over its partisan groupthink mentality if they do not recognize they have the problem.