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MAIN PRESS PLANS ANOTHER WEEK OF CHENEY SHOOTING COVERAGE
Sun Feb 19 2006 10:57:36 ET
If the nation's top magazines have the pulse of the country -- get ready for another exhaustive week of exhaustive Cheney shooting coverage!
This just in... Both TIME and NEWSWEEK are planning high impact covers of Cheney for newsstands starting tomorrow, with each magazine rolling out top staff bylines and thousands of words on the hunting incident: TIME: With deep reporting by John Cloud, Mike Allen and Matthew Cooper/ Washington, Cathy Booth Thomas and Patricia Kilday Hart/ Austin, and Hilary Hylton. NEWSWEEK urgently brings in its big investigative guns: Evan Thomas, Michael Isikoff, Daniel Klaidman, Richard Wolffe, Holly Bailey, Mark Hosenball and Eleanor Clift in Washington and Carol Rust in Texas.
NEWSWEEK's Jonathan Alter essays that media budget cuts and shifting news priorities have contributed to the public being in the dark about Cheney's ways and means.
TIME headlines a poll: DICK CHENEY APPROVAL RATING 29%
NEWSWEEK editor Mark Whitaker defends his decision to push for another week of Cheney-Shooting coverage: "The reason we ultimately decided to stick with a cover is not because of the hunting incident itself-although we did turn up some new details that you might not have read elsewhere-but because of what it says about the mysterious world of the most powerful vice president of recent times."
MORE
On CNN's RELIABLE SOURCES, WASHINGTON POST reporter Dana Milbank fretted that the White House is exploiting the public's growing disdain for the mainstream media. "Of course they succeed, Milbank said of Bush aides. The press always looks awful. They will once again make us look awful.
CNN's Candy Crowley added: "The perception is that we're whining."
White House correspondent Bill Plante of CBS agreed.
"The vice president and the White House have both used the constant press coverage of this story as a wedge, he told RELIABLE SOURCES host Howard Kurtz. It plays to the prejudices of the people who are predisposed not to like us, and it's one way to distract attention from what happened.
Developing...
Cheering tidbits lighten otherwise grim week
February 19, 2006
BY MARK STEYN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
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In an otherwise grim week -- at least on unimportant peripheral matters like Iranian nukes -- three things cheered me up. The first was the decision of Iran's bakers to rename Danish pastries "Roses of the Prophet Muhammed pastries.'' Has a ring to it, don't you think? If they're looking for a slogan, how about "Iranian pastry: There's nothing flakier. Except our president."
The second cheery sight was the destruction of a McDonald's in Lahore by the usual excitable young lads from the religion of pieces. Apparently the lively Pakistanis had burned every single Danish target in the city -- one early Victor Borge LP left behind by the last British governor -- and had been obliged to diversify. So they dragged Ronald McDonald out of the joint, torched him in the street and danced around his flaming remains shouting "Death to America! Death to Britain! Death to Tony Blair!"
I'm not sure I even get that. Ronald and Tony seem kind of similar from a distance but even on the all-infidels-look-alike-to-me-especially-when-they're-alight thesis you'd think they weren't that easily confused.
The third jolly event of the week was those other excitable fellows -- the Big Media White House reporters -- jumping up and down shouting "Death to Dick Cheney!" NBC's David Gregory, the George Clooney of the press corps, was yelling truth to power about why the Elmer-Fudd-in-gun-rampage story was released to "a local Corpus Christi newspaper, not the White House press corps at large.'' I know how he feels. I remember, like, four or five years ago -- early September, maybe second week -- there was this building collapse in New York and I had to learn about it from the TV because this notoriously secretive paranoid administration couldn't even e-mail me a timely press release. For an NBC guy discovering that some hicksville nowhere-burg one-stop-light feed-price sheet got tipped off before he did is like a dowager duchess turning up at the royal banquet to discover the scullery maid's been seated next to the queen.
So anyway David Gregory's going bananas and yelling "I will yell!" and "Don't be a jerk!" at the White House press secretary, and there's more smoke coming out of his ears than from Ronald McDonald in Lahore, and I'm thinking, you know, maybe Karl's latest range of Rovebots that he planted in American media corporations are just a wee bit too parodically self-absorbed to be plausible. And then this lady pipes up and asks, "Would this be much more serious if the man had died?"
Well, maybe. And maybe it would be even ever so much more serious still if, after peppering him with birdshot, Cheney had dragged him into a safe house in the Sunni Triangle and decapitated him with a rusty scimitar while shouting "Allahu Ahkbar!" and then sold the video to al-Jazeera.
Fortunately, the Washington Post had that wise old bird David Ignatius to put it in the proper historical context: "This incident," he mused, "reminds me a bit of Sen. Edward Kennedy's delay in informing Massachusetts authorities about his role in the fatal automobile accident at Chappaquiddick in 1969."
Hmm. Let's see. On the one hand, the guy leaves the gal at the bottom of the river struggling for breath pressed up against the window in some small air pocket while he pulls himself out of the briny, staggers home, sleeps it off and saunters in to inform the cops the following day that, oh yeah, there was some broad down there. And, on the other hand, the guy calls 911, has the other fellow taken to the hospital, lets the sheriff know promptly but neglects to fax David Gregory's make-up girl!
One can only hope others agree with Ignatius' insightful analogy, and that the reprehensible Cheney will be hounded from public life the way Kennedy was all those years ago. One would hate to think folks would just let it slide and three decades from now this Cheney guy will be sitting on some committee picking Supreme Court justices and whatnot.
Meanwhile, from Malaysia to Jordan to Scandinavia, it was a bad week for journalists increasingly constrained -- not to mention fired and otherwise humiliated -- in their ability to cover the big story of our time. If I had to pick a single moment to contrast with the hilariously parochial narcissist buffoons of the Washington press, it would be another press conference in another government building, this time in Oslo, called by Norway's minister of labor. Surrounded by cabinet ministers and a phalanx of imams, Velbjorn Selbekk, the editor of an obscure Christian publication called Magazinet, issued an abject public apology for reprinting the Danish Muhammed cartoons. He had initially stood firm in the face of Muslim death threats and the usual lack of support from Europe's political class, but in the end Mr. Selbekk was prevailed upon to recant and the head of Norway's Islamic Council, Mohammed Hamdan, graciously accepted the apology and assured the prostrate editor that he was now under his personal protection. As the American author Bruce Bawer commented, "It was a picture right out of a sharia courtroom."
In Canada, by contrast, the Western Standard (for which I also write) stood firm in its decision to publish the cartoons, and as a result is suffering legal harassment from Muslim lobby groups and has been banned from both Air Canada and two of the country's leading bookstore chains, Indigo-Chapters and McNally Robinson. Paul McNally of the latter defended his action this way: "We feel there is nothing to gain on the side of freedom of expression and much to lose on the side of hurting feelings." Not exactly Voltaire, is it? "I disagree strongly with what you say but I will fight to the death for your right to say it as long as it doesn't hurt anybody's feelings." Maybe it could be Canada's new national motto.
It's easy to be tough about nothing. The press corps that noisily champions "the public's right to know" about a minor hunting accident simultaneously assures the public that they've no need to see these Danish cartoons that have caused riots, arson and death around the world. On CNN, out of "sensitivity" to Islam, they show the cartoons but with the Prophet's face pixilated so that he looks as if Cheney's ventilated him with birdshot and it turned puffy and gangrenous. C'mon, guys, these are interesting times. Anyone can unload the umpteenth round of blanks into the bulletproof Chimpy Hallibushitler, but why not take a shot at something that matters?
Or perhaps it would just be easier to change the term ''free press'' to the ''Roses of the Prophet Muhammed press.''
Kathianne said:
KarlMarx said:OK people, listen up.... Paris is burning, people are dying the world over, Islamist extremism is at a fever pitch.... during times like this, it's important to concentrate on our priorities... making Bush look as stupid as possible at all costs!!!!!!!!!!
Remember, no matter what, pull out all the stops, we have the First Amendment to hide behind, we'll wrap ourselves in the flag and claim that all we do is in the name of freedom!!! yes, freedom of the press!!!! freedom to yell "fire" in a crowded theater!!!! freedom to ingratiate ourselves with our leftist overlords!!!!!! Long live Lenin and Marx!!!!!
oh...uhm... sorry, got carried away there for a second, well you all have your assignments, let's not forget to pretend to be objective!!!!!
Bullypulpit said:Well, firstly, Dubbyuh doesn't need any help to make him look stupid. he does fine all on his own.
As for the ignorant and unwashed masses burning McDonald's in Lahore, well, a few less McDonald's ain't necessarilty a bad thing. They are, however, prime examples of what happens when religion and politics ride in the same cart. Death and destruction follow in their wake.
Lots of Christians got their panties in a twist, and rightfully so, about a photo of a crucifix in a jar of urine...But no buildings were burned...And nobody died as a result of it. Two or three hundred years ago, however, and it would have been a different story. The artist would have been broken on the wheel, then drawn and quartered with his assorted body parts serving as decorations on someone's battlements.
But that was then. The violence spawned as a result of some poorly drawn cartoons today is indicative of an ignorant and immature populace. Add politicians in the region out to advance their political agendas on the back of religion and you have a situation ripe for violence. Everywhere you see these outrageous acts of mob violence...you see it unchecked by the authorities. This means the authorities have a vested interest in promoting the violence. They secure their positions of power by preying on the fears and insecurities of the populace. They control the leaders of these movements...they keep the population ignorant...They rob them of any hope of real freedom by keeping the populace in constant fear of being attacked. And so they maintain their grip on power.
It ain't black and white like the newsprint these cartoons were printed on.
Media madness: Cheney shooting overkill, cartoon cowardice
February 20, 2006
BY MARY LANEY
There is a lot of big news about to come out. More tape recordings made of Saddam Hussein and his advisers soon will be translated and released. We may find out whether Iraq actually did have weapons of mass destruction and if they were moved prior to our invasion there.
However, instead of focusing on this, the news has been filled with stories on how Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot his friend with birdshot while hunting quail.
Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, is pushing for an investigation into Operation Able Danger and whether the group has proof that there were early warnings, in 2000, that an attack was planned on the United States and our Navy ship in Yemen.
Instead of this heading the news, it was the story of the Cheney accident. Politicians called it a cover-up by Cheney because he didn't call the major news media immediately, but waited for a day. Wait a minute. Didn't Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) have a stroke that wasn't reported for three days? Didn't Sen. Ted Kennedy wait more than 12 hours before alerting authorities that his car went over a bridge in Chappaquiddick and a woman was still submerged in the car? And didn't it take a year for the Rose Law Firm records of Hillary Clinton to show up in the White House? And how long did it take for news of White House counsel Vince Foster's suicide to be reported?
The vice president's accident was just that, an accident. Yet the chatter has been all over the place on it -- one TV host even proclaimed that Cheney could have been drunk when he did it. Is this accident worth five days of news coverage?
When will we get the news about Able Danger and the tapes of Saddam Hussein?
The New York Times did more than 30 stories on reported abuse by a few Americans on prisoners in Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison. Other papers, news magazines and network newscasts followed suit. Yet they all refused to reprint those Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad for fear they'd insult Muslims.
Is there a view now that America is evil and that it's all right to condemn this country, its leaders and soldiers, but not offend those who have attacked it, who have killed 3,000 people here?
Muslim radicals flew commercial airlines into buildings here, beheaded innocent businessmen and a reporter in Iraq and put the tapes of the beheadings on the Internet, blew up Iraqi children at school, murdered teachers, beheaded schoolgirls attending a Christian school in Indonesia, killed American sailors in Yemen, slaughtered hundreds of children in Russia, fired rockets at schools in Israel, killed scores of commuters in Spain and England, murdered vacationers in Bali, attacked a missionary school in India and took hundreds hostage inside a theater in Moscow, with deadly results.
Where was the Muslim outrage when all of this was going on? Did Muslims take to the streets to protest the carnage? No. But Danish newspapers print cartoons depicting Muhammad as a bomb-turbaned man and people are killed, embassies are burned.
And what happens? Newspapers here (including the Sun-Times) don't print the cartoons. They tell us what's in the cartoons, but they don't print them.
Two editors of the Daily Illini at the University of Illinois who were brave enough to print the cartoons, alongside an article that explained the controversy, were suspended for their action. I don't understand this curious political correctness.
We've been treated to publications of pictures of beheadings and of American contractors burnt, dismembered and hanging from a bridge, yet newspapers can't reprint cartoons? Are we now so sensitive to our attackers that we are cowered by them? If so, we've become a nation of self-hate. More important, we have forgotten history.
John Keegan, England's preeminent military historian, once observed that the deportation and ultimate extermination of the Jews was an open secret and served as a self-policing factor in most of occupied Europe. Thus were the Nazis able to control the great nations of Europe with a minimum garrison force. The lesson is that the intimidation of the few is sometimes enough to ensure the docile complicity of the many.
Welcome to the not-so-new world of political correctness.
Kathianne said:Perhaps it's better to say they are the enemy? With the explosion world wide of Islamic nut cases over cartoons being hidden from the public by the MSM, what are they going to 'play' this week? Cheney's hunting accident of course!
http://drudgereport.com/flash2ch.htm
GotZoom said:I'm waiting for the press to say that Bush told Cheney to shoot somebody while hunting in order to get the press to lay off the coverage of the Iraq war.
GotZoom said:I'm waiting for the press to say that Bush told Cheney to shoot somebody while hunting in order to get the press to lay off the coverage of the Iraq war.
Kathianne said:
Muslim radicals flew commercial airlines into buildings here, beheaded innocent businessmen and a reporter in Iraq and put the tapes of the beheadings on the Internet, blew up Iraqi children at school, murdered teachers, beheaded schoolgirls attending a Christian school in Indonesia, killed American sailors in Yemen, slaughtered hundreds of children in Russia, fired rockets at schools in Israel, killed scores of commuters in Spain and England, murdered vacationers in Bali, attacked a missionary school in India and took hundreds hostage inside a theater in Moscow, with deadly results.
Where was the Muslim outrage when all of this was going on?
