February 16, 2006
Double Distortions and a Distraction
For those of you who are still interested, Cheney's story is as full of holes as poor Harry Wittington. If you have the patience to follow all the links, which I was able to do --my boiling blood fueling a delicate attention span -- you will be very impressed by the investigative reporting of BarbinMD, who displays a persistance rarely seen in the press these days, unless they're hot on the track of a pop author or the murderer of a white woman.
John Nichols at The Nation is right to remind us that the furious flurry of the White House Press Corps over the insignificant little shooting of just one guy, is a drop in the bucket. In fact, it so artfully distracts from the real issues, that one wonders if Karl Rove had a hand in the plan. Harry wasn't THAT big a donor.
"To be sure, a trigger-happy vice president makes for good feature stories – not to mention good comedy. But where were the demands for answers, where was the cries for accountability, where were the shows of righteous indignation last week, when it was revealed by the National Journal that Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, had told a federal grand jury he was "authorized" by Cheney and other White House "superiors" to disclose classified information to journalists as part of a plot to defend the Bush administration's manipulation of prewar intelligence to make the "case" for going to war with Iraq.
In the scheme of things, the many unanswered questions about whether the vice president of the United States engaged in a conspiracy to deceive Congress and the American people about reasons for entering a war that has now killed more than 2,200 Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians would seem to be a bigger deal than the same vice president's involvement in a hunting accident.
True, it would be foolish to assume that Scott McClellan would be any more forthcoming about the administration's manipulation of pre-war intelligence -- and evidence of Cheney's involvement in efforts to attack those who exposed that manipulation – than he has been about the manipulation of information regarding the vice president's gunplay.
But if the press corps is going to rise from its slumber when it comes to Dick Cheney's secrecy and chicanery, would it make sense to get excited about the Constitutional crisis – as opposed to the veep's itchy trigger finger?" Hear hear.
And then there is the more ominous theory proposed by Jay Rosen on Pressthink, that Cheney did not inform the White House Press Corps of his accident INTENTIONALLY, because he considers the press irrelevant. Rosen suggests that it is Cheney's first overt move toward cutting the press out of the loop entirely -- frosting the fascism cake, as twere. In a dictatorship, there is no need for the people to be informed of the activities of the government, because it's none of their business. Too bad. Even though the press has not done its job for many years, lapping up the sleazy spin, failing to ask important questions, taking dictation from the administration, perpetrating endless lies without checking sources, eliminating the press corps entirely would not be an improvement -- there are still some good guys out there that haven't been coopted, smeared or tossed ..... yet.
Photo note: I find that pole right in the middle of my beautiful composition to be quite a distraction. It would have been impossible to leave it out of the shot, especially since I was sitting at a red light in rush hour traffic and thought it unwise to leave my car in order to give it my best effort.
Posted by Dakota at February 16, 2006 04:03 PM