Rove may be without peer when it comes to message massaging, but this Administration, with their Homeric, Titanic string of screw-ups, long ago outstripped his arts. Rove has only one speed really, and it is to tweak and tweak our biases, over and over again, so that they become self-reinforcing and amplifying to the point they drown out the details, the actuality. But there are some things, like doodlin' around on a guitar and cramming ice-cream cake into your gob while one of America's greatest cities drowns, that can not be obscured or disguised. Shootin' a guy in the face with a shotgun is also like that. More and more, what Rove does seems like dropping a dried-out turd on a fancy china plate and sprinkling a little sawdust on it, hitting the Old Triangle and yelling, Chow's On! I don't know how much more of this we can digest. Of course, there will always be those salivating at the sound of the Triangle, and this time, Brit Hume came loping up, eyes drooping and Basset Hound tail wagging, and afterwards "Please sir, I'd like some more".
So we come to Vice President Cheney's begrudging Fox interview. "And it was, I'd have to say, one of the worst days of my life". I don't think Harry Whittington will be too fond of the day, either. What can you say about Brit Hume? Murrow during the Blitz he ain't:
Q Now, is it clear that -- he had caught part of the shot, is that right?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: -- part of the shot. He was struck in the right side of
his face, his neck and his upper torso on the right side of his body.
Q And you -- and I take it, you missed the bird.
Part of the post-blast spinning was to trivialize Whittington's injuries "It was almost like he was spending time with me in my living room," said hospital administrator Peter Banko, who visited Whittington." But it seems like the guy settin' a spell in that 'living room' was in pretty rough shape:
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I said, "Harry, I had no idea you were there." And --
Q What did he say?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: He didn't respond. He was -- he was breathing, conscious at that point, but he didn't -- he was, I'm sure, stunned, obviously, still trying to figure out what had happened to him.* * * * *
Q His eyes were open when you found him, then, right?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Yes. One eye was open. But they got him in the emergency room in the small hospital at Kingsville, checked him out further there, then lifted him by helicopter from there into Corpus Christi, which has a big city hospital and all of the equipment.
Cheney's cover blind for not informing the press – that they first had to await a prognosis – is ludicrous. Only Administration stooges like Brit Hume or David Brooks would buy such nonsense. Why not wait until Whittington's fully recovered (let's all hope he does)? That way the whole thing can be presented as an inspirational feel-good story of the year! Cheney was in secure-undisclosed-location lockdown, hunkered in until he could get a fix on how big a disaster he has wrought this time. Despite his lip-service about concern for the Whittington family, Cheney couldn't quite bring himself to bring it off convincingly:
Q When did the family -- when had the family been informed? About what time?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, his wife -- his wife knew as he was leaving the
ranch --
Q Right, what about his children?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: I didn't make the calls to his children, so I don't know exactly when those contacts were made.
Harry was leaving the ranch alright, with his face and vital organs full of buckshot. His daughter was quoted as saying she didn't know whether they were taking him to the hospital or the mortuary. Back at "Ranch Headquarters", Vice President Cheney had moved on to more important considerations – whether it would advisable for him to venture back out for more firearms hijinx on Sunday:
Q Will it affect your attitude toward this pastime you so love in the future?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: I can't say that. You know, we canceled the Sunday hunt.
I said, look I'm not -- we were scheduled to go out again on Sunday and I said
I'm not going to go on Sunday, I want to focus on Harry. I'll have to think
about it.
He's thinking about it? Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Special note is taken today, for David Brooks' tear-stained hissy fit in which he laments the state of the Washington politics. What is this world coming to, when the Vice President can't blast his friend in the face with his fancy Italian shotgun, without everyone making a big deal about it? He chides the press and Democratic politicians for not letting Cheney have his little fun in private, but Brooks falls to pieces, all busted-up inside, just thinking about the toll this must be taking on Cheney:
On a personal level, the Cheney-Whittington accident was a sad but unremarkable event. Two men go hunting. Both are sloppy, and one friend shoots another. The victim is suffering but gracious. The shooter is anguished in his guilt.
"The image of him falling is something I will never be able to get out of my mind," Dick Cheney told Brit Hume yesterday, adding, "It was ... one of the worst days of my life." Afterward, he looked back, relived the moment and took responsibility. "It was not Harry's fault. You can't blame anybody else," Cheney said. "I'm the guy who pulled the trigger and shot my friend."
In normal life, people would look at this event and see two decent men caught in a twist of fate. They would feel concern for the victim and sympathy for the man who fired the gun.
Unremarkable? I know this is Dick Cheney we're talking about, a guy with the blood of tens of thousands in his hands, but unremarkable? Whittington is gracious, but given his 'sloppiness' it’s the least he could do for his Shooter. I don't know, I just don't see anguish coming from Cheney. And decent? There's a word that seldom seems to work its way into a paragraph containing the word "Cheney". 'Normal' people will reserve their sympathy for Cheney. Whittington gets concern, but that's only because if he lingers or fails, it will only cause Cheney more political grief. Heavy sob.
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