COMensarations
Thursday, February 16, 2006
One View on the Media Reaction to the Cheney Hunting Accident
Why some people won’t leave it alone.
Vice President Cheney accidentally shot a friend while hunting and there is a media feeding frenzy. I feel sorry for Mr. Cheney. He had the same sort of momentary lapse that causes automobile accidents and home accidents every day and which is intensely embarrassing, especially since he is a public figure. This cartoon pretty sums up how I feel.
However, many people in the media are trying to make more out of it than there is. If Mr. Cheney had been driving a car that rear-ended someone and put them in the hospital for a day or two, would there be this level of speculation and mountain-building? It’s hard to say, but I doubt it.
Meanwhile, such observant and learned pundits as Thomas Sowell and Jane Chastain attribute the media’s frenzy to the fact that Mr. Cheney is a Republican leader. I think there is a darker reason as well: the incident involved a gun.
The evidence for this is that the media promptly went running to the Bradys for quotes. Not the NRA, but the antigun crowd.
The antigun crowd is no doubt thrilled. If the stolid senior citizen Dick Cheney had such an accident then what hope is there for the average Joe Citizen to use a gun safely? (I would have referred to Dick Cheney as respectable, but of course, they don’t think he is respectable.)
However, they are also, no doubt, disappointed. Here a 78-year-old man was shot from only 30 yards away and he DIDN’T DIE! Aren’t guns supposed to be deadly? Isn’t everyone who gets shot supposed to die, promptly and in acute agony, so that they can make a case for guns being the most evil things ever created?
If you think my attitude in the foregoing paragraph is extreme, look at the way the media demanded to know if Cheney would be charged with a crime as soon as Mr. Whittington had a heart problem and they thought maybe he would die after all (whoo-hoo! or alternatively, insert Peter Lorre laugh).
It almost makes me want to go out and see if I can get in front of a car with a Kerry-Edwards sticker on it.