Posted on 02/22/2006 11:34:25 AM PST by Quilla
It was the month of February in 2006, they'll say in the future. That's when the sickness became inescapably evident. As they shovel the last spadeful of dirt on the mainstream media outlets that once received the most attention and respect, they will tell us the symptom was there for all to see: an embarrassing confusion about which of two stories about a vice president of the United States was worthy of major coverage.
The story they chose to elevate was the one about Dick Cheney peppering a fellow hunter in Texas with pellets from a 28-gauge shotgun, even though the incident had no significance regarding public policy, the welfare of the populace, the struggle with Islamic terrorists or much of anything else.
True enough, Vice President Cheney did not immediately mount a horse and race through the countryside like Paul Revere, shouting out what had happened. But while more haste would have been advisable, this was only an accident on a bird hunt, for Pete's sake. One NBC reporter nevertheless threw a tantrum in the White House pressroom while his colleagues fantasized about the peculiar, secretive workings of Cheney's mind, his arrogance or his strained relations with President Bush. Had common sense prevailed, it might have occurred to them that Cheney was just shaken up.
According to one count, NBC, CBS and ABC carried 34 stories on the shooting in a two-day period, emphasizing it more than any other single event. The New York Times went front-page crazy on the non-issue, along with other papers, and Time and Newsweek decided it was worthy of a cover story.
Meanwhile, another story concerning another vice president was being virtually ignored. This one was about Al Gore's statement in a speech in Saudi Arabia that there had been "terrible abuses" of Arabs in America after Sept. 11.
Granted, Gore is not now serving the U.S. government in any official capacity, but because he was vice president for eight years, a candidate for president and a member of both the House and Senate, his words have heft in the Middle East. So when he said in his Feb. 12 speech to 2,700 Saudis that the U.S. government "indiscriminately rounded up" Arabs after the terrorist attack and held them "in conditions that were just unforgivable," it was significant. With his statement, Gore risked stoking the riots engulfing the Muslim world over Danish cartoons depicting Muhammad, making Middle East Arabs hate the West even more and undermining the cause of his own country in a time of war.
Keep in mind that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis, that Saudis support terrorists with money and that Saudi Arabia exports terrorist philosophy with its underwriting of Wahhabi schools. Keep in mind, too that the United States arrested only a tiny fraction of Arabs in America after Sept. 11's random killing of 3,000 people here and that those arrested were suspected of terrorist connections or illegal acts, including the visa violations committed by several of the hijackers. Nothing unforgivably abusive happened to them.
The increasing partisanship of important segments of the press has been no secret, but these vice presidential stories and the dramatically different press attention that came their way is next to startling in what it tells us about leftist bias. It takes the unhinged imaginings of a Michael Moore mentality to justify it, and I don't think the public is buying. The demise of the high and mighty draws closer.
Yes, well said. I would email this to my liberal friends if I thought it would do any good, but unfortunately they are all mad on these issues.
"One of these days and it won't be long, you'll look for me but baby, I'll be gone."
I can't wait for that day.
A google news search for - gore saudi arabia - returns 355 hits while a similar search for - cheney quail - produces more than 7000 articles. Amazing.
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