2/13: Stop! Or My Vice President Will Shoot!
At the top of our round-up following the King funeral last week (see 2/8 Blogometer), we noted that race isn't a big issue in the blogosphere very often. Today, as almost everybody has something to say about the hunting accident involving VP Cheney and TX atty Harry Whittington, we'll point out that gun rights and hunting are even less frequently debated in the blogosphere. Since the passage of the (now-expired) Assault Weapons Ban in '94, the gun control movement has been in what seems an inexorable decline. Cultural objections to hunting have been set aside in favor of yard signs announcing "Hunters for [Dem candidate]" -- ex-VA Gov. Mark Warner (D) benefited from his "Sportsmen for Warner" signs. By early '03, Howard Dean's pro-gun stance was seen as an asset instead of a liability. And we recall that in the wake of John Kerry's WH'04 loss (prior to the launch of the Blogometer) MyDD's Chris Bowers listed gun control as an issue Dems should "should drop, if not" actually switch positions.
As for the incident itself, there are other questions about Cheney's responsibility, about the delay of the reporting -- liberal bloggers consider it part of the WH's pattern of putting their own reputation above the timely and accurate informing of the public -- and lots and lots of jokes. Generally speaking, lefty bloggers read between the lines to find greater fault with Cheney and the WH and even to find analogies with what's wrong with the admin overall, while conservative bloggers give Cheney the benefit of the doubt and decry the left's reaction.
Also today, we find that disgraced GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff is a widespread topic of discussion -- not just re: the release of the first of the photos showing him in the presence of Pres. Bush, but follow-ups to stories about the media (as it does today) and the midterm elections and lobbying reform (an issue that exists largely because of him). For long periods last year while the print media was covering the Abramoff investigation, few bloggers devoted much space to it. That's changed, all right -- post-indictment he's a permanent fixture on the landscape.
CHENEY I: It's Times Like These Where We Question The Propriety Of Journalistic Clichés Such as "Targeted," "Takes Aim" And "Under Fire"
Corpus-Christi Caller Times was the 1st to report the story, but many are getting the report from the AP via Matt Drudge-favored Breitbart wire service.
Conservative Michelle Malkin: "Unfortunately, this is very bad news for the White House -- and not just because of the inevitable late-night jokes that will inundate the airwaves over the next week. The Dems will exploit this accident to smear Cheney as incapable of being trusted, weak of mind, etc. The resignation rumors will fly again." 
Considering the continuity of gov't angle, ex-KE'04 aide Ari Melber asks if Cheney will continue to take hunting trips as VP: "Private hunting ranches are not a safe place for the Vice President. That was always obvious, but a trip to the intensive care unit should erase any doubt, even for Dick Cheney. Now reporters must press Cheney to answer the lingering questions about this weekend's hunting trip - and whether it was his last." Liberal BradBlog notes that Cheney hired Whittington at Halliburton, sending right-leaning Kesher Talk into sarcastic hysterics about "the dread Halliburton connection! How could we have overlooked that! And if that doesn't show that something nefarious was behind this then..."
E&P's Mitchell points out there was an 18-hour gap between when the incident's happening and reporting, and plenty of bloggers wonder about it as well. Liberal Steve Soto argues, "if it hadn't been for the ranch owner calling her friend at the local paper this morning and letting him know about it, this story wouldn't have even come out today because the White House was willing to let it go unreported until the local paper went with it. The local sheriff was willing to let the Secret Service sweep this under the rug, like a Jenna and not-Jenna chugging contest." He asks: "What were they afraid of? The embarrassment of Cheney looking stupid, reckless, or perhaps being drunk as a skunk?" Michelle Pilecki at Huffington Post probes further: "Also odd was the story that the shooting victim ... was 'bruised more than bloodied' according to the Houston Chronicle, and "his pride was hurt more than anything else." Yet, notes E&P, he was airlifted to a hospital and had spent more than a day in an intensive care unit. By the time the story went national, the prominent Austin lawyer was reported as being in stable condition." Conservative Outside the Beltway sees nothing conspiratorial: "Perhaps the Whittingtons wanted time to call family members and determine the nature of the injury. One can't imagine that the White House thought they would avoid having this incident kept secret by an entire hospital staff."
The Carpetbagger Report tries on the "suspicious timing angle," the "conspiracy fodder angle" and the "'era of responsibility' angle, before simply concluding: "One thing's for sure -- when the Vice President shoots a guy, it gets people's attention."
One issue being raised by some left-leaning bloggers is the manner of hunting, which they find unsporting. Lefty P.Z. Myers downplays any talk that the shooting says anything about Cheney's character and insists he's not anti-hunting -- but he is anti- this type of hunting: "lowing away a horde of pen-raised animals, released in front of you to scurry into your gunsights, is not a sport. It's disgusting bloody-mindedness, a lazy, cowardly, vicious sort of abuse." MO-based ArchPundit: "That's not hunting, it's a damn trap shoot. I'd say the prey didn't have a chance, but given his stellar hunting skills, they did."
Getting prominent play at the Drudge Report is a statement by ex-Reagan spokesperson/gun control advocate James Brady saying: "Now I understand why Dick Cheney keeps asking me to go hunting with him" and wife Sarah Brady: "I've thought Cheney was scary for a long time. Now I know I was right to be nervous." Xrlq: "One hopes this was a lame attempt at humor." Conservative Stephen Bainbridge notes that it hasn't yet appeared on the Brady Campaign website and so questions its validity. But if it is legit, he comments: "It's kind of a pathetic commentary on the state of political discourse, when prominent folks like this can't even rise to the level of a bad Saturday Night Live sketch."
Josh Marshall and Nitpicker are among the lefty bloggers to argue that ranch owner/Bush pioneer Katharine Armstrong is blaming the victim by saying Whittington "came up from behind the vice president and the other hunter and didn't signal them or indicate to them or announce himself." Lefty Blogenlust checked up the TX Parks and Wildlife rules on gun handling, and concludes "the guy who was shot shouldn't be blamed." Libertarian Jeff Soyer at Alphecca isn't pleased with Cheney, either: "Another 'friend' of gun rights makes a fool of himself (and by extension, all of us) by forgetting the rules of safe gun handling. Thanks a lot, you dick."
Conservative Soccer Dad notes that VA Del. Jack Reid (R) had his gun accidentally go off in his state house office last month: "No doubt these two incidents will cause a lot criticism and bring further discussion of further regulating guns. However, that these incidents would inspire such a response shows how far our society has come in its view of guns." He points out that 2-time Dem WH nominee Adlai Stevenson accidentally shot and killed a girl in his youth, yet it wasn't a campaign issue. He predicts these events will follow Reid and Cheney.
CHENEY III: Thankfully, A Laughing Matter
TBogg indulges his "inner Freeper" and connects the dots -- viz., that Whittington is active in TX GOP politics and served on the TX funeral board. Asks TBogg: "So why did Dick Cheney attempt to pop a cap in Whittington's ass? And why did he wait a day to admit to what he did? And can we call this Cheneyquiddick?" More: "Here we invoke Noonan's Law which states: 'Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.' So get out your speculums and have at it..." Digby channels Rush Limbaugh speculating about Whitewater back in '94. The blogger for Air America's Majority Report Radio invokes 2 jokes currently going around the left side of the blogosphere, both the formulation and replacement word here: "GUNS DON'T SHOOT PEOPLE, CHICKENHAWKS SHOOT PEOPLE." Mad Kane does her limerick shtick. And Kieran Healy channels Jules from "Pulp Fiction": "And you will know I am the Unitary Executive when I lay my vengeance upon you."
A few conservatives are having fun with it too, although without any hostile undertones. The kitty cats of right-leaning Laurence Simon weigh in. Says one: "He has a lawyer as a friend? Okay, now I know he's the most evil man on the planet." Ace of Spades HQ: "The spin is that it was just a mistake. The truth is that Cheney was just hunting the ultimate prey -- man." Chris Short at right-leaning The Jawa Report has collected some more spiteful jokes made by commenters at left-leaning Huffington Post; the 1st comment at TJR is an equally spiteful comment from the right, setting off a fierce debate about propriety.
Captain's Quarters complained about the photo AP released of Cheney -- he's snarling against a black background -- and already Jesus' General has Photoshopped it into an ad for "Old Gutshot '78" scotch.
ABRAMOFF: Like Waldo, Zelig And Don Corleone All In One Person
Before the Cheney story broke, it was looking like the top story today would be Time's publication of a photo featuring Bush and Abramoff in the same room at the WH, as Bush and Karl Rove are meeting with Kickapoo chief Raul Garza (whom Abramoff represented at the time). It still is the 2nd-biggest thing out there. New York Times also has the photo, but in black and white.
Think Progress and others on the left point out that the photo undercuts a recent claim by WH spokesperson Scott McClellan about Abramoff's WH visits: "The photo of Abramoff with Bush at a private meeting undermines White House claims that any meetings between the two occurred at 'widely attended' holiday parties." Kevin Drum at Political Animal: "So apparently Abramoff had no trouble waltzing into the White House whether he was invited or not. It's almost like he was a regular visitor or something." Sploid header: "Whoopsy!"
Meanwhile, conservative bloggers have yet to address the above, but instead are rolling their eyes or beside themselves with laughter, as Abramoff is hard enough to find that they've added a red circle around his head. Rob Port at Say Anything: "After all the furor from the media and the left over photos of Bush and corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff together, this is the best they've been able to come up with ... Color me underwhelmed." Bluto at The Jawa Report: "What do you mean you don't see him. Right there! No... there... on the left, damnit, he's RIGHT THERE!... in the back... wait, we'll put a red circle around his head..." Blogs for Bush finds "the next photo" of Bush and Abramoff -- a satellite image of North America with helpful arrows pointing to Crawford, TX and Washington, DC.
Ex-Spinsanity co-editor Brendan Nyhan noticed last week that Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) insinuated on NPR that his 7/31-8/1/02 hearings on the potential for war with Iraq reduced American support for the war by 20 points. Nyhan went looking for the poll data, and found nothing of the sort. He adds: "In fact, I don't see evidence of a swing from 'close to 70 percent' support for military action to 'below 50 percent' at any point" during Biden's tenure as Foreign Relations Cmte chair. More: "Given Biden's reputation as a blowhard and a plagiarizer, you'd think he would be more careful about this kind of self-aggrandizing rhetoric, especially given that he voted in support of the war after the hearings."
Jane Hamsher noticed Sen. George Allen (R-VA) calling for de-classification of the NIE re: Scooter Libby and Valerie Plame, and opines for Huffington Post: "The GOP obviously knew the shooting had happened and after putting so much energy into spreading the meme that Cheney had the absolute right to have Scooter do what he did they wouldn't allow Allen off the reservation like that without some sort of larger purpose. Maybe it was only a trial balloon, but still."
At Power Line, Paul Mirengoff comments on a Washington Post story dealing with Sen. John McCain's (R-AZ) WH'08 prospects: "I think one must distinguish between two types of Bush loyalists. The first type, the ones who feature in the Post's story, consists of the operatives who pushed Bush to the forefront in 2000. Many of them have a strong pragmatic streak. ... McCain, by positioning himself as somewhat right-of-center (not a huge move) may well succeed in courting elements of this group." More: "The second group of Bush loyalists consists of his present voting base. This group is more conservative than his original backers and, in my opinion, more conservative than Bush himself. Winning this group over will be much more dicey proposition for McCain."
MIDTERMS: Rage Against The Machine
A diarist at MyDD points out that the version of a recent speech by OH SEN candidate/Rep. Sherrod Brown (D) at Brown's own Grow Ohio blog. "Here's a paraphrase of his response to the question about Iraq: 'I've got to give them (Bush and Company) credit. They're doing a better job with body armor in Iraq now.' The next day, four US Marines were killed by an improvised roadside bomb. One was from Westerville, OH. He was scheduled to come back to Ohio on leave this month. No wonder they scrubbed the online version of his speech." Interestingly, the founder of MyDD is Jerome Armstrong, a consultant to Brown who is mostly on hiatus from the site through the end of the campaign.
DC-based Justin Hart, who has supported Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX) through his troubles, has now reluctantly decided it's best that he not return next year. Citing the triumph of the GOP "machine" over the conservative agenda "and the hopes that the Republicans can hold" their House majority, he recommends GOP challenger Tom Campbell: "I know Tom's family and I can say without hesitation that he is the right man to take on and replace Delay."
BLOGS VS. THE MSM I: The Borrowers
On 2/10, a short profile of Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) ran in the Washington Times. Problem is, reporter Eric Pfeiffer -- formerly of NRO and Wonkette -- used 2 quotes from a recent story about Obama by Chicago Sun-Times reporter Lynn Sweet (full disclosure: Pfeiffer is a friend and former colleague at the Hotline). One quote was by Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas. Sweet and Moulitsas both noticed the lifted quotes, and both blogged about it. Moulitsas: "This is outright plagiarism. Will the Washington Times do something about it?" Sweet: "Call the journalism police. It's a quote heist." The story made it around the left-blogosphere, to Eschaton and Crooks and Liars, and this a.m. is mentioned in Howard Kurtz's column, with a follow-up and summary at FishbowlDC. Conservative James Joyner sees the incident as a larger problem in the MSM: "One wonders what they're teaching at J-School. Bloggers, most of whom have no formal journalistic training, seem to instinctively understand that we are supposed to acknowledge the sources of our stories, preferably linking back to the original when an online version exists. Why don't mainstream reporters do this more consistently?"
Last week, we mentioned that CAP's Think Progress obtained and posted excerpts of Abramoff's e-mails to Washingtonian reporter Kim Eisler (see 2/9 Blogometer). On 2/10, the Washington Post quoted them as well (albeit sans the all-caps they appear to have been written in). Starting 2/11, National Review's Byron York asked how the e-mails made their way to Think Progress, wondering if CAP had misrepresented themselves to Eisler in the process of obtaining them. He also pointed out that Eisler is married to the Post's Judy Sarasohn, who covers lobbying issues there, wondering if there was a missing link there. But soon he heard back from CAP's Judd Legum, who denied doing so. And eventually he spoke to Eisler himself, who told York that he confused the Center for American Progress with the American Prospect. York also speculated that Eisler was "sympathetic to Abramoff," which fellow Corner contributor John Podhoretz quickly shot down. Lefty TBogg followed the developments, providing an amusing running commentary as "Byron Goodhair" attempted to explain the controversy and "make it all go away."
Online edition update -- On 2/12, The Democratic Daily ntoed that Eisler had posted a comment to their site earlier in the day, making the same clarifications as he had made to York, and explained how exactly he was "sympathetic" toward Abramoff -- "[M]y position is that Mr. Abramoff was like a lobbyist on steroids, but the prevailing notion that he cheated his clients, as opposed to doing all this to promote their interests, is not accurate. ... In any event, he is a human being with twins, a dog and a cat, and doesn’t really need to be turned into the villain of the century."
BLOGS VS. THE MSM II: The Other Brady Campaign
Washington Post's Jim Brady wrote a column addressing the 1/06 blogstorm over Post ombudsman Deborah Howell's mischaracterization of the Abramoff scandal. In his opening, he mockingly accepts all of the criticism thrown at him: "I am a twit without a functioning brain. I also do not have any [censored]. Despite 10 years spent in online media, I really don't understand the Internet. I am a dangerous ideologue, an enemy of democracy.
Not surprisingly, the blog critics he refers to are not impressed. Crooks and Liars' John Amato, one of his critics: "I agree Jim, you don't understand the internet. It's not calculus, but your phony outrage tries to make it seem like it is. ... How many death threats did [Howell] receive? I save mine and I'd be willing to share them with you." Matt Stoller, another critic, writes that the piece "shows just how aggressive he is willing to be to avoid accountability at his newspaper. It's quite remarkable, actually. He still does not understand what went wrong." Liberal Taylor Marsh: "If you're going to play in the blogosphere, be prepared to play by big blog rules."
In the piece, Brady disclaims the existence of "any such thing as 'the blogosphere' as opposed to 'the mainstream media.'" NAM's Pat Cleary, who (like Stoller) attended the Press Club event where Howell met her blogger critics, disagrees: "There is a huge divide between the MSM and the blogosphere. As we said at the Press Club, the MSM is trying to colonize the blogosphere, but we don't really want to wear shoes after all, as it turns out. What has happened is that the blogosphere has become the de facto ombudsman for every MSM outlet in the country, free of rules or profit motive that (understandably) constrain groups like the Post." But Power Line's Mirengoff, who also attended the event, agrees with Brady: "[B]loggers use common technology, but beyond that there's little that justifies unifying them under a single label. For example, we don't think that we do the same thing, or provide the same service, as most top-tier lefty blogs."
At RedState, Mike Krempasky writes an open letter to GOP web consultants: "I've talked to at least a half a dozen of you for more than a year and a half -- and I've told EVERY one of you that the number one thing that the party could do to really develop and support conservative bloggers in electoral politics was to develop a solid affiliate fundraising tool -- one that would allow us to involve our readers for the candidates or causes of our choice - and measure the results of our efforts. And the Democrats beat you to it." Krempasky's link goes to a page on the official Dem party website where individuals can create their own fundraising campaigns, which appears to be much like the liberal grassroots outfit ActBlue. More Krempasky: "Convene a small group of technically literate people, if it's more than five, you'll fail -- and do it tomorrow. Get a product by the end of the month. And when your web folks tell you it can't be done that quickly -- get a new batch of web folks. Ebay was written in days, not quarters."
THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Cocoon III
In the past few months, Slate's Mickey Kaus has posted a lot about "Brokeback Mountain," predicting early on that it wouldn't break $50M at the box office (wrong) and that it wouldn't play in the "heartland" (jury's out). He's also received plenty of grief for picking on the film, and now he explains his obsession as being part of his ongoing habit of pointing out how the MSM reinforces ideas liberals want to believe, whether true or not.
He writes: "I hadn't realized, until someone tipped me off, that Michael Moore's 'Fahrenheit 9/11' had exactly the same marketing strategy as 'Brokeback Mountain,' the gist of which was 'Hey, a film sticks it to the conservatives but it's playing in the red states!'" But 'Fahrenheit' actually underperformed in "red" areas, and Kaus bets that the same is true of "Brokeback": "The Heartland Breakout Meme seems like B.S. of the sort that consistently hurts Democrats ... [it's] the sort of gratifying myth that in the past has helped lull liberals (and gay rights activists who may or may not be liberals) into wild overconfidence. Remember when Democrats actually believed that 'Fahrenheit' would help push Bush out of office?"
LEST WE FORGET: Kiss Of The Spider Creeps
The mysterious Eggagog surfaces all-too-infrequently these days, but THIS IS FUN TO MAKE A BLOG ON THE COMPUTER WEBSITE is still fun -- and pleasantly bewildering -- to read (on the computer website).
