The Cheney Fallout

Betsy Newmark likes Hume because "he'll ask questions about issues that wouldn't occur to many other interviewers because he is open to the conservative side. I just think that some news interviewers have no idea what the conservative side of an issue is so that it never even occurs to them to ask those questions.

"Sure, Brit's a conservative, but he's also tough and fair. All those news people who insist that they don't twist the news to fit their own self-acknowledged liberal ideology think that a conservative like Brit is incapable of doing the same thing. I think they both do it, and if I'm going to watch the news on TV, I like seeing the conservative twist on things. I just wish they'd all drop the pretense of objectivity because we all know that it is not so. Fox is conservative and ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and PBS are liberal. Fess up now and stop thinking that we're too dumb to notice the choice of stories on all those supposedly unbiased news broadcasts."

Blogger Ed Copeland says that Quailgate could help Bush:

"This week, how often have you even heard Bush's name other than in relation to not getting the word from Cheney about the hunting accident? The spin makes my theory seem more plausible -- the administration surrogates have been united in claiming that the hunting accident is no big deal and that the story is just the poor, jealous media who feel scooped by a lesser media entity. They emphasize how no one wonders how Cheney is feeling (his interview with Brit Hume followed the same tune). There is even a story about Republicans who see the story as a welcome respite from the other scandals they fear. I myself wouldn't put it past Karl Rove to see this as a golden opportunity to force Cheney out and install their own hand-picked successor for 2008 as the new vice president."

He must be channeling Peggy Noonan.

There were signs that the Hill was finally going to get serious about oversight, but . . . nahhh.

"Senate Republicans blocked a proposed investigation of President Bush's domestic spying operation Thursday as the chairman of the Intelligence Committee said he had reached an agreement with the White House to pursue legislation establishing clearer rules for the controversial program," says the Los Angeles Times . "But Senate aides described the discussions with the White House as very preliminary. And angry Democrats expressed skepticism over the negotiations, with some describing them as a ploy to protect the Bush administration and the highly classified surveillance operation from congressional scrutiny."

Abu Ghraib is back in the news. Walter Shapiro , Salon's new Washington bureau chief, explains why the magazine is running these new photos of the stomach-turning abuses there:

"The horrors carried out during the last three months of 2003 by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison are shockingly familiar and, at the same time, oddly remote. The torture photographs that were published when the prisoner-abuse scandal first exploded have lost their power to shock. We have all seen the pictures repeatedly: a pyramid of unclothed prisoners; a naked detainee cowering in front of snarling dogs; captives wearing punitive hoods that seem borrowed from a medieval inquisition; American soldiers grinning over Iraqi dead bodies and, always, that chillingly ironic thumbs-up sign.

"Eventually this visual repetition numbs the senses. All these ghastly images have been viewed so often that they seem to belong to a different war conducted by a different superpower in a different century. Yet the photographs that news organizations have so far published represent only a partial sample of the government's chilling documentary record from Abu Ghraib.

"When Salon's national correspondent Mark Benjamin obtained the never-before-released photographs that accompany this essay, we had to both establish their authenticity and to answer the basic question of our justification for publishing. The images themselves partly answered the why-publish question for us. Speaking for myself, I remain haunted by one of the more seemingly banal pictures in this new collection from the dark side. Taken on Dec. 6, 2003, the photograph shows a uniformed and seemingly untroubled Army sergeant leaning against a corridor wall completing his paperwork. All routine, except standing next to the sergeant is a hooded and naked Iraqi prisoner. Just another day of methodical record-keeping at Abu Ghraib."

On the blogging front, New York magazine's Clive Thompson cites a study by NYU's Clay Shirky that says there are only a relative handful of major players:

"There is enormous inequity in the system. A very small number of blogs enjoy hundreds and hundreds of inbound links -- the A-list, as it were. But almost all others have very few sites pointing to them. When Shirky sorted the 433 blogs from most linked to least linked and lined them up on a chart, the curve began up high, with the lucky few. But then it quickly fell into a steep dive, flattening off into the distance, where the vast majority of ignored blogs reside. The A-list is teensy, the B-list is bigger, and the C-list is simply massive. In the blogosphere, the biggest audiences -- and the advertising revenue they bring -- go to a small, elite few. Most bloggers toil in total obscurity . . .

"In politics, the highest is Daily Kos , one of the first liberal blogs -- with 11,182 links -- followed closely by Instapundit , an early right-wing blog, with 6,513. Uncountable teensy political blogs lie in their shadows."

But even teensy bloggers can have an impact if they're read by bigger boys and girls who pick up on their arguments.

Finally, in a transparent effort to sex up this column, Salon's Rebecca Traister writes about the new issue of Vanity Fair -- and the role of designer Tom Ford -- under the headline "Topless Bodies Found in Brainless Magazine":

"Rachel McAdams ('Wedding Crashers,' 'Red Eye,' 'The Family Stone'), one of the women scheduled to pose for this year's cover, arrived at the photo shoot only to learn that Ford wanted her naked. I had not thought a willingness to disrobe was a condition of appearing on the front of Vanity Fair, but reluctant ecdysiast McAdams not only lost her spot, she is mentioned in the magazine only as 'a certain young actress' who 'bowed out when the clothes started coming off,' thus squelching 'Ford's plan of having a gorgeous female threesome.' "There you have it, ladies, straight from Vanity Fair: We don't care if you star in three successful movies in one year; if you won't get naked for a 'threesome,' you can forget your spot in our pages!

"As for Ford's claim, to editor Jim Windolf, that it was an 'accident' that he plopped himself in the middle of the cover shot (fully dressed, because only the chicks have to take it off), a quick glance at the magazine's cover line ('Tom Ford's Hollywood'), its cover-photo caption ('Ford's Foundation'), its full-page contributor's bio of Ford, the letter from editor in chief Graydon Carter titled 'Vanity Fair's Tom Ford Moment,' a story about the making of the magazine called 'Welcome to Tommywood!' and multiple pictures of Ford (walking sexed-up 12-year-old Dakota Fanning to her photo shoot, taking a bite out of Mamie Van Doren's inflated breast, strutting around in Wellingtons) provide subtle clues that there is nothing 'accidental' about Ford's megalomania."

I hear the comments section at the Post blog is back in business today. Play nice and no talking about %&**!@ or even circ&**@#!