Belligerence and Cowardice: What Else Could You Ask for in a VP?

Of course I didn't (couldn't) watch the Cheney primping on Faux News yesterday. I have an actual digestive tract to care for, do you mind? I do wonder how the experience might have compared with a SOTU-viewing, another experience any sentient, self-aware creature obviously avoids.

It certainly would have been harder to resist (and would have actually better served his clientele - the public) had he chosen to appear on Oprah or Dr. Phil. Obviously he was unwilling to risk an encounter with any actual journalists or reporters.

Of course these days it's no problem getting timely reports and commentary on almost any danged thing you want if your search-engine skills and or "favorites" lists are well-endowed. But I have come to understand that even those with a keyboard sometimes are prone to the potato behavior formerly associated with the idiot box. So, in case you also missed Brit Hume on his knees putting salve on the VP's tender secrets and are lacking for insights, here's a bit to get you started, courtesy of DailyKos:

Cheney Chooses to Hide Behind Fox's Skirts

If there were any lingering doubts about Fox serving as the "Mommy" network for the Bush administration - kissing the group's numerous self-inflicted owies to make them go away - those doubts were laid to rest yesterday with the Brit Hume interview of Dick Cheney.

The Los Angeles Times this morning outlines some of the criticisms leveled at Cheney's choice of venue for "coming clean":

"Now that he feels forced to talk, he wants to restrict the discussion to a friendly news outlet, guaranteeing no hard questions from the press corps," said Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg (D-N.J.) in a statement.

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Add to the Mommy network's amazing "kiss it and make it better' powers - on top of a softball interviewer on the most sympathetic channel in "newsdom" - the unremarked-upon phenomenon of a managed, delayed and massaged video clip being presented as a heartfelt, spontaneous confessional. The swashbuckling, he-man image of the Bush administration couldn't withstand a live or unedited version of Cheney's account of events; even with the propaganda playing field tilted seriously in Cheney's favor, Fox was unwilling to risk the possibility of an unfavorable view of the vice president making it to the public. Think of it as air-brushing the airwaves and you've pretty much got the sad and sorry picture.

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Rove worried the vice president's silence on the issue was becoming a political problem, CBS News chief White House correspondent Jim Axelrod reports.

Cheney is in a "state of meltdown" over shooting his friend and the political fallout it has caused, a source close to the Cheney has told CBS News.

The most ridiculous part of Rove's "switch the victim" strategy is portraying Whittington family members - with their 78-year-old patriarch lying in ICU with gunshot lodged near his atria - as fretting over Cheney's state of mind in the aftermath of the accident.

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For heaven's sake, get the vice president out in a public, no-holds-barred press conference instead of hiding timidly behind Fox's feel-good skirts. The whole fiasco is reeking of ... well ... unmanliness.

It's Probably Just Me . ..

What could we accomplish if we designated $75 million for a propaganda ("education") campaign in support of say human rights - or the Bill of Rights - here on our home turf? I know the money would be a helluva lot better spent in that cause as far as promoting the endangered principles of democratic governance than will the funds George is seeking for Iran propaganda. That's assuming we found an actual business-savvy but uncorrupted manager for the program (i.e. no one who knows George or has ever met Cheney - or Scalia).

Of course this administration's track record in making cost-effective public-benefitting decisions speaks for itself, but the sheer lunacy of the concept is pretty boggling, wouldn't you agree?

And I forget what the recently published figure was for the administration's domestic expenditures for propagandizing on behalf of their misbegotten, anti-human rights, typically pro-corporation programs (i.e. the opposite of my proposition). It was another big number that you paid taxes for.

The Guardian's take on this is entitled Bush plans huge propaganda campaign in Iran":

The Bush administration made an emergency request to Congress yesterday for a seven-fold increase in funding to mount the biggest ever propaganda campaign against the Tehran government, in a further sign of the worsening crisis between Iran and the west.
Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, said the $75m (£43m) in extra funds, on top of $10m already allocated for later this year, would be used to broadcast US radio and television programmes into Iran, help pay for Iranians to study in America and support pro-democracy groups inside the country.

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Diligence Schmiligence - They Needed to Shoot Something

I'm not much for kicking folks at all, never mind when they're down. I've winced at a number of shots taken at Dick Cheney's human clay pigeon, largely on basis of his party affiliation and loyalty to the current administration. I shudder as well at the cheap expressions of concern for the victim that are so strongly expressed that they are obviously intended only for show. He's not a victim like, say, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are victims. He's not a victim like a similar number of former New Orleans residents are victims.

But he does share his victim-hood and its fundamental cause with all of those folks. He's the poster-child (at age 78!) for what happens when you refuse to make use of the human ability to accept and deal with uncertainty, project the possible consequences of your actions accordingly, and perhaps most importantly take responsibility for making reasonable and appropriate decisions based on those findings and be accountable for the outcome. Dick Cheney and the administration he is a part of have as we know a standard pattern of totally failing to follow those seemingly basic principles of human behavior and hence are constantly in violation of what must be considered the basic rules of governance that we expect from those pretending that we elected them.

Impeachment is inevitable. We cannot have enshrined in important powerful governmental roles people who do not subscribe to the basic principles of being accountable to the American people, accepting reality and the associated uncertainties, making at-times painful but reasoned decisions based on that reality, and taking responsibility for their decisions.

And that is my big message here. The "I" word. It is showing up now more frequently even in the conservative-biased corporate media including the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. The word "impeachment" needs to be on our lips ready for sharing at the slightest opportunity.

The indomitable Ms Ivins has some lone-star insights to offer on Cheney's most recent victim:

Of course the jokes are flying all over Texas — what's the fine for shooting a lawyer? — and so forth. Dick-Cheney-shooting-Harry-Whittington is fraught, as they say, with irony. It's not as though the ground in Texas is littered with liberal Republicans. I think the vice president winged the only one we've got.

Not that I accuse Harry Whittington of being an actual liberal — only by Texas Republican standards, and that sets the bar about the height of a matchbook. Nevertheless, Whittington is seriously civilized, particularly on the issues of crime, punishment and prisons. He served on both the Texas Board of Corrections and on the bonding authority that builds prisons. As he has often said, prisons do not curb crime, they are hothouses for crime: "Prisons are to crime what greenhouses are to plants."

In the day, whenever there was an especially bad case of new-ignoramus-in-the-legislature — a "lock 'em all up and throw away the key" type — the senior members used to send the prison-happy, tuff-on-crime neophyte to see Harry Whittington, a Republican after all, for a little basic education on the cost of prisons.

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I am not trying to make a big deal out of a simple hunting accident for partisan purposes — just thought it was a good chance to pay tribute to old Harry, a thoroughly decent man. However, I was offended by the never-our-fault White House spin team. Cheney adviser Mary Matalin said of her boss, "He was not careless or incautious (and did not) violate any of the (rules). He didn't do anything he wasn't supposed to do." Of course he did, Ms. Matalin, he shot Harry Whittington.

Which brings us to one of the many paradoxes of the Bush administration, which claims to be creating "the responsibility society." It's hard to think of a crowd less likely to take responsibility for anything they have done or not done than this bunch. They're certainly good at preaching responsibility to others — and blaming other people for everything that goes wrong on their watch.

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