Gunning for Cheney

Assumes ? Is that the new standard?

National Review posts a transcript of ex-senator Alan Simpson dissecting Cheney for Chris Matthews:

"MATTHEWS: Doesn't he have a special responsibility as someone in line to be President and Vice President of the United States to let people know that something this serious happened this Saturday?

"SIMPSON: Nothing happened to the Vice President, so what did the people of America need to know? Nothing happened to the Vice President, nothing.

"MATTHEWS: But he was the shooter in an accident that shot a guy.

"SIMPSON: That's right.

"MATTHEWS: You don't think that's newsworthy?

"SIMPSON: All I know, Chris, is after a life in Washington, Dick Cheney, and I'm not paranoid, is not popular with the media, they don't like him because he's aloof and he doesn't answer their questions and sometimes he tells them to stuff it, so any time Dick Cheney makes a fluff, it's going to be the news of the day. I have been called by 20 different news agency today as if they had bombed Iraq again. I mean, this is nuts, absolutely nuts."

Harry Shearer sees a case of delayed outrage by the press:

"Of course, the Bush administration's media strategy--keep it secret, deny it if it leaks, fire the dissenters--has been practiced far more than thrice. But the first two major versions of the strategy--the runup to the Iraq War and the aftermath of Katrina--occurred as tragedy. Now the gods reward us with the Dick Cheney shooting story, in which the media strategy resurfaces as farce.

"And, predictably, the White House press corps, which sat still and silent for the tragic versions, is up in arms over the farcical one."

In the Charlotte Observer, North Carolina professor and hunter Scott Denham fears for the image of his pastime: