David Gregory spills the beans...

[Larry Gude]

Certainly, any Vice President shooting someone while hunting is going to be news and, seeings how the injuries are not serious, it should be expected that the jokes would be coming fast and furious.

That's all fine. The first thing I did with it was make some fun.

The absurd part is in the fact that, once again, the 'media' are taking a molehill and trying to hurt President Bush with a mountain made of whole cloth, once again overplaying their hand, as it were.

There is this cacaphony of faux outrage that the administration had the gall, the nerve, the arrogance...to not have an immediate Presidential press conference to make sure we all know of this horror.

The nation, the world, the galaxy were forced to sit in the dark about this critical issue, to blissfully and ignorantly go on with life as usual without the knowledge that the world had suddenly and forever changed for...14 hours.

I kid you not, that is THE story, repeated umpteen times.

Just as some real anger towards the administration was taking shape, just as the world was finally recognizing the true evil of these people, a dumb ass reporter turns on the cold water;

"Let's just be clear here," Gregory said. "The vice president of the United States accidentally shoots a man, and he feels that it's appropriate for a ranch owner who witnessed this to tell the local Corpus Christi newspaper and not the White House press corps at large or notify the public in a national way?"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/13/AR2006021301303_pf.html

So, out goes the angle of sinister secrecy; can't very well be much of a secret if a newspaper has been told. Suddenly, this issue of grave national concern becomes one of...vanity and arrogance...on the part of...the elite media journalists.

So now we know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, the anser to THE question;

If a tree falls in the woods, it did NOT fall until the Whitehouse media circus says it did.

 

[mAlice]

I know. This big news got the big from me, too.

 

[Tonio]

This came up on the evening show on WJFK last night, somebody named Jay Severin, whom I had never heard before. His argument was that with any political figure, the best strategy for any embarrassing or damaging incident is for the figure to put out the full story right away. Especially when it involves the No. 2 guy in the executive branch. Otherwise, the media assumes that the figure has something to hide, and the politician's support and image is gradually eroded by the series of disclosures. In his view, the full story always comes out sooner or later.

Larry, you have an excellent point about the vanity and arrogance of the White House press corps. There was certainly nothing sinister about Dick Cheney not making the story public himself. Severin suggested that Cheney probably didn't have chief of staff with him on his trip, someone who might be more adept at handling the media. By letting the eyewitness be the first one to talk to the media, Cheney and his people lost an opportunity to control the story. If they had done differently, this whole story might have been old news by Monday, because of the way the weekend news cycles work.

 

[Lenny]

By letting the eyewitness be the first one to talk to the media, Cheney and his people lost an opportunity to control the story. If they had done differently, this whole story might have been old news by Monday, because of the way the weekend news cycles work.

You make a long leap here! There is NO WAY Cheney and the White House could have controlled the story given the current environment in Washington. The WHPC would have immediately jumped on the fact the victim was a lawyer, the victim was Welfare-eligible, the victim had Cheney's back, the victim. . . . They would have turned it ugly no matter what.

 

[Tonio]

You make a long leap here! There is NO WAY Cheney and the White House could have controlled the story given the current environment in Washington. The WHPC would have immediately jumped on the fact the victim was a lawyer, the victim was Welfare-eligible, the victim had Cheney's back, the victim. . . . They would have turned it ugly no matter what.

"Control" was probably not the right word. "Mitigate" might have been a better choice. I was trying to make a point about strategies for handling a hostile press corps.

If Cheney had been out front with all the details immediately, that might have helped blunt the attack mentality of the WHPC. If he had done it right, he might have become a sympathetic figure in the eyes of the public. Instead, he let the story fester, which is like waving raw meat in front of rabid dogs.

 

[Pete]

I think withholding the info was a stroke of genius. Think about it. Cheney comes out and tells all right off the bad, there are a few jokes and it goes away.

He holds back and then releases info and now we get to watch the mainstream media kerk around for days having seizures making total fools out of themselves.

I haven't seen this much stupidity since Ollie North testified in congress and the media did a half hour special about his ribbons.

:brilliant:

 

[SamSpade]

I've become a big fan of Jerry Doyle's show lately - but I got really tired of his harping on this issue yesterday. This, in his own parlance, is a "grapefruit". A complete non-story, a distraction.

You know what WAS news? The OTHER VP, in Saudi, trashing our troops and providing wonderful propaganda for al-Jazeera. Why does it bother me? Besides the fact that it's preaching to the choir - people just ITCHING for yet another reason to hate ALL Americans (without regard to party affiiliation) but that in the long run it injures our troops and what they hope to accomplish, all for the sake of scoring political points.

You want to be a patriot, Al? Criticize the administration? Tell him to secure the damned borders; tell him to stop spending money, to start spending accountably. Aren't you the technology/environment VP? Talk about that. Hell, yammer on about Kyoto for all we care. Keep going on about global warming and alternative energies.

But the very last thing a soldier in Iraq or Afghanistan needs to hear is their former VP undermining what he's putting his LIFE on the line for.

 

[Pete]

Laura Ingraham is disecting yesterdays press reaction. These people are the epitome of stupid.

Reporter chic: "Has the Vice President offered his resignation?"

Press Sec.: "That is absolutely absurd"

Reporter Dude: "Has the VP taken the hunter safety course in Texas"

Gallery: *laughter*

 

[SamSpade]

I just can't get over the fact that the damned press is so livid and crying "Cover Up" when they know absolutely everything, and the whole deal is that the VP waited 20 hours before he blessed them all with the news. Geez, who do these SOBs think they are, that they are entitled to NON-news stories the moment they happen? You'd think they were *owed* this, which is the way they're reacting.

The guy is ok, it was an accident, and it has nothing to do with any other issue of the day, except that it exposes the fact that the VP is slightly paranoid of the press for obvious reasons.

 

[Pete]

I think it is funny when asking questions at the press conference they call Cheney "the shooter"

 

[SamSpade]

Just heard this one:

Aerosmith.

"Cheney's Got a Gun..."

 

[vraiblonde]

"Cheney's Got a Gun..."

That would make a fabulous MoveOn.org commercial. I hope they use it.

 

[AndyMarquisLIVE]

On that not...

Yet, Gregory works for the worst in the bunch. I like David Gregory, he's an extremely good anchor. But the networks he is on - NBC and MSNBC are failures.

Joe Scarborough easily makes any small issue the Democrats take and blows it out of all proportions. This guy is constantly blowing up on air and insulting guests on his program when they disagree with him. All that said, he's nowhere near as bad as Bill O'Reilly.

Keith Olbermann last week blasted CNN for calling coverage of the evacuation of the Senate Russell Office Building "BREAKING NEWS" hours after it happened. Now, will Keith single out HIS network for calling the Blizzard breaking news at 4:45pm on Sunday afternoon or for not once getting a report on the Tsunami last year until 4 days after it happened or for removing their live news for 2-hour olympics reports from Torino?

Oh and please don't get me started on MSNBC's ratings disaster that was "Connected Coast To Coast" where Ron Reagan asked a military expert "What is a black hawk?"

Don't expect breaking news on NBC or MSNBC until the Olympics are over. Remember the story of Daniel Pearl, the slain Wall Street Journal reporter. MSNBC cut out of their precious Olympics (commercials for that matter) with a news ticker saying "Daniel Pearl Murdered." They also failed to cover the hostage crisis is Beslan because of the Republican National Convention and dismissed Hurricane Charley and the election for Carly Patterson winning a gold medal.

And with their new live format, don't expect nothing shy of three channels. MSNBC LIVE - a copy of Headline News, MSNBC PRIMETIME - repeats of analysis and two hour old reruns and MSNBC WEEKENDS - where the stars shine on H&L all night long.

 

[AndyMarquisLIVE]

By the way...

This was on last night's "Countdown with Keith Olbermann":

http://ak-msnbc.msnbc.com/video/100/n_countdown_duckhunt_060214.asf (100k video, 16 seconds).

 

[Larry Gude]

Tonio...

If Cheney had been out front with all the details immediately, that might have helped blunt the attack mentality of the WHPC. If he had done it right, he might have become a sympathetic figure in the eyes of the public. Instead, he let the story fester, which is like waving raw meat in front of rabid dogs.

...you're missing, I think, the Achilles heel of the left in the country, including, yes, most of the major media who constantly play up or down news about this administration depending on how it best negatively affects W;

Following me here. For eight years the media and the left spent all their time trying to justify, overlook and mitigate the constant boorish, mean spirited and down right criminal conduct of the Clinton administration.

The long term affect of this was, whether they know it or not, they developed a reactive nature that there IS ALWAYS more than meets the eye to the story. They knew there was in the case of their guy and they helped hide it. They became conditioned.

Fast forward to W.

So far, as far as scandals go, we have the Val Plame deal and perhaps wire tapping. Even these are non storys if you look at them objectively or even compared to Bubba, but, for the sake of argument we'll say that there is at least a cloud over the administration on these issues.

Now, our conditioned media look for more, the dirt, in any and everything Bush and his crew do. There has to be more because there WAS more with the other guy; a conditioned response.

Because of the fact that this administration is not the bunch of criminals the Clinton era brought us, there is NOTHING to hide.

So, Rove and Co just allow any allegation that comes along to be the sole province of the media and the Demcorats; let them do as they will because the truth eventually comes out and who has egg all over their face?

Old proverb; if you opponent is in the process of shooting himself in the foot, get out of the way.

Time and time and time again, the media and the Democrats look like asses over each issue. That's why they scream so long and loud about differences like the war and Plame and energy and so forth to be cheating lies; they have to be. If not, then who's wrong? Who's the azz?

Roves's genius has been to simply let the media and Democrats do their thing.

 

[Tonio]

The long term affect of this was, whether they know it or not, they developed a reactive nature that there IS ALWAYS more than meets the eye to the story.

Surely the "secrecy means wrongdoing" attitude originated decades before Clinton. I suspect it first became rampant during the Nixon years, when reporters dreamed of being the next Seymour Hersh or Woodward & Bernstein.

From my reading, White House reporters were chummy with the FDR and Kennedy administrations in ways that made their 1990s descendants look like Gingrich acolytes. If those reporters had been doing their jobs, we would have known about those presidents' affairs while they were happening.

And the "gotcha" approach is not limited to politics. Government agencies, non-profit agencies, and corporations all have horror stories about dealing with scandal-mongers.

http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=020206B

For years, rather than following public relations counsel, public figures in the midst of scandals -- politicians, entertainers, athletes, and the like -- listened to their lawyers, who generally advised to "admit nothing, shut up, and let us handle this in court."

While such counsel may make sense sometimes -- depending most specifically on the extent to which the charge is true -- it is often the worst advice to follow. A celebrity in the public eye usually can't ignore his or her way to innocence. The situation often needs to be confronted.

Had Martha Stewart listened to public relations professionals, who would have told her to admit to lying to federal investigators and apologize, she wouldn't have lost her job, served time in the slammer, or torpedoed -- at least temporarily -- her reputation.

It often -- not always, but often -- constitutes the wisest public relations advice to apologize, do it quickly to stop the bleeding, and then demonstrate the sincerity of the apology with subsequent action.

 

[BOHDEN]

but did he get the bird?

 

[Larry Gude]

Point taken...

Surely the "secrecy means wrongdoing" attitude originated decades before

...and certainly that is correct but the current crop of reporters are more affected by what they've personally experienced than what they read from or are told by their predecessors in regards to the 1960's or what Helen Thomas tells them about Jesus' childhood.