Cheney Hunting Story Given Fresh Legs
Harry Whittington has suffered a heart attack and has birdshot lodged in his heart, ensuring this story won’t go away for at least another day or two. It should be said once again that, although even the White House sees the humor in the story, we all should join, left and right, in wishing Harry Whittington a healthy recovery. At the age of 78, even minor events can be cataclysmic, and this one appears to have been fairly major, so our thoughts and prayers go with him…
Distressing Development
Get well soon, Mr. Whittington. Sickly, the Kos Kids are running with the conspiracy theory that Whittington never survived the accident and salivating over what criminal charges might be hung on the Vice President for the slaying and cover-up.
What people say on the Kos site is unimportant. The facts are: Cheney shot his companion; the news was withheld from the press for nearly a day (presumably to avoid the Sunday morning talk shows); the news was not divulged by the White House, and instead was released by the ranch owner to a small local paper; surrogates (such as Alan Simpson) suggested that it was the victim’s fault; Cheney is incommunicado and has yet to issue a statement about it. No public acknowledgement or apology.
In your opinion, is this how the administration should have acted?
peter, I could care less, frankly – my only concern is that Whittington has a speedy recovery. It was AN ACCIDENT, for God’s sake – and it wasn’t covered up, the news was delayed (and so what? – what national principle, what important subject does a hunting accident bear upon?).
This is the molehill of all molehills, and in a few years will provide a nice trivia question, but, unlike Iraq, Darfur, the NSA story, the deficit, ad nauseum, will have no bearing on anyone outside of Whittington’s family.
The national principle is that if something significant happens to the President or Vice President, the public has a right to know. The VP is the second most important elected official. If he shoots someone, this is clearly something which the White House has an obligation to reveal at the earliest possible instant.
Do you feel that if, for example, the VP was driving a car which hit a pedestrian that the public would have the right to know? What if he were on medication for depression? I’m not suggesting that Cheney is a depressed bad driver — only that these are examples of things which the public has the right to know about the man who is a heartbeat away from the Presidency. Shooting someone falls into that category.
Although the Vice President works for the people, we know much less about Cheney than his predecessors. For example, he has not released his medical records and we don’t know what his heart condition is. (By contrast, after Reagan had a colonoscopy, there was an illustration of his colon on the front page of the New York Times. Personally I think this falls in the Too Much Information category, but it shows how far we have come since then). Rightly or wrongly, the inevitable result of secrecy is that people will assume the worst.
The one uncomfortable question I have about all of this is – what on earth are either of these two guys doing with guns? I don’t care how healthy Mr. Whittington was before the accident, the man is 78 years old! And of course, Cheney’s had about 25 heart attacks already at his age – what is he doing shooting off firearms in close quarters?
Far be it for me to deny people their right to own and operate firearms, but just like driving, some times the kids have to take the keys away from grandpa.
Well, I can enlighten you on the condition of his heart – it’s bad, bad, bad…
Look, if I had my preference, Cheney would have addressed the issue by now and hopefully laid it to rest…but really, this is not near the big deal it’s being made out to be…
This is not Teddy Kennedy driving off a bridge drunk and leaving a woman who is not his wife to die…it’s a few hours delay in releasing the details of an accident…and if that few hours was spent in determining how to play the story, well, it may not look good, but that doesn’t mean I entirely blame them…
Well, you can’t equate anything to what Kennedy did – getting off for vehicular manslaughter tops just about everything.
But they took a story where the Vice President shot a man, and somehow managed with their delaying and hedging to make Cheney look WORSE. I didn’t think that would be possible, but they did it. The fact that the spin is that this was somehow Whittington’s fault is sickening. I’m not for a second suggesting that this happened on purpose, but even in a routine hunting accident, which this appears to have been, there’s a fault, and that fault lies with the man who pulled the trigger. I’m not saying he should be prosecuted, but to deny his own personal responsibility in the incident is kind of disgusting.
No doubt, I concede it’s been handled very poorly…
I’m 100% positive it was an accident and that Cheney feels terrible about what happened. The problem is that the way it was handled was typical of the Bush administration: cover up anything that might potentially make them look bad, no matter how important or how trivial.
Agreed – the coverup is always worse than the actual incident itself (why must every administration learn this Nixonian tenet of politics?).