So, let's get this straight: the VP of the United States accidentally plugs one of his hunting buddies, the type of accident that happens dozens, even hundreds, of times every year in this country to hunters of every description.
And the overwhelming reaction of the nation's journalistic class is to heap abuse on the VP and the White House, to the virtual exclusion of everything else, for days on end -- for the high crime of not telling them quickly enough?
This behavior has been stunning, even given our already cellar-dwelling expectations of these professional chatterers.
At least Tony Blankley gets it.
[T]he Washington press corps, and particularly the White House press corps, has developed, as an institution, a grossly dilated view of itself. Most of us can tolerate arrogance, if it is accompanied by extraordinary capacity and virtuosity. The brilliant scientist, the war-winning general, the great artists are entitled to their pride.But the hallmark of the Washington press corps these days is mediocrity, groupthink, a lack of curiosity and rampant careerism. These attributes were all on show in the shooting-party incident. But this is just a trivial incident — except for the poor, shot gentleman who suffered a heart attack, may he recover fully and quickly.
We live at a moment of revolutionary change in the international order. The rise and violence of radical, possibly caliphate-forming Islam and the huge, culture-changing, unexamined consequences of rampant globalization make the present one of the least predictable moments to be alive.
Both government officials and citizens are in desperate need of a national press corps that is alive to the change and digging to find factual hints of the near future. We need the kind of future-oriented intellectual vigor, curiosity and genuine iconoclasm that typified American reporters in the first half of the last century.
Instead, as the shooting-party incident exemplified, we have in the White House at the most elite level of American journalism, self-absorbed, self-important men and women who stand on their prerogatives even over marginal and inconsequential matters.
While nowhere near the edge, even the omniscient InstaPundit declaims, "Cheney screwed up bigtime."
Well, ponder this: the only real screw-up here would seem to be the failure of Dick Cheney, who is both a savvy and experienced political pro and a dedicated public servant, to remember (or, worse, care) that the press's tender religious (their God = themselves) sensibilities must be assuaged at all times, lest those same reporters take to the virtual streets, start throwing verbal Molotov cocktails and looking for victims to behead with their press pads.
Maybe there's an eerie parallel between the unreasoning reaction of journalists to feeling disrespected by the VPOTUS and the response of various jackleg Islamic mobs to the "disrespect" set off by supposedly offensive editorial caricatures in Denmark. The underlying causes (shooting accident, cartoons, whatever) are incredibly minor and unimportant in and unto themselves, but somehow the rest of the world is destined to be held hostage by emotional reactions from the professionally aggrieved.
Does anyone, besides Tony Blankley and a few others, remember that there's a war on?
Related:
• Dick Cheney's Fox News interview video - via Expose the Left
• Dick Cheney interview transcript - via FNC