After years of a political landscape that considered it open season on Democrats, apparently things have taken a lethal and possibly fatal turn.
As the White House attempts to claim that they intentionally waited for a public citizen to report the story to the press–as convincing an argument as Pee Wee Herman announcing that he “meant to” take a header over his bike handlebars–Harry Whittington is (let’s face it) fighting for his life as pellets are apparently making a bee-line for his ticker.
Here’s what I don’t get:
Today’s newspaper ran a picture of Cheney from an earlier quail hunting incident. As one would expect, the rifle was tilted at what appeared to be an angle of about, oh, fifty degrees or so, as Cheney prepared to blow helpless birds out of the sky with his WMD–weapon of mass defowling.
Now the reports claim that Whittington wandered “into the line of fire.” Which I would believe if Cheney were trying to kill, say, Bambi’s mother. But he was trying to kill birds that were–unless I missed something–in flight.
I fully admit I’ve never hunted, but how the hëll does one step “into the line of fire” of a gun elevated at fifty degrees toward the sky? I don’t know how close Whittington was standing, but if he was at point blank range he’d probably be dead, and if he was any distance, he’d have to be ten feet tall. I just don’t get it.
It should be interesting if, in addition to stonewalling Congress whenever investigations are launched, the White House attempts to stonewall the Texas sheriff.
PAD
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I fully admit I’ve never hunted, but how the hëll does one step “into the line of fire” of a gun elevated at fifty degrees toward the sky? I don’t know how close Whittington was standing, but if he was at point blank range he’d probably be dead, and if he was any distance, he’d have to be ten feet tall. I just don’t get it.
For what it’s worth, The Smoking Gun has posted the incident report from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department at http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0213061cheney1.html
In the section noting “Contributing Factors”, a box is checked for “Victim covered by shooter who was swinging on game”. Notably, the box for “Victim moved into line of fire” is not checked.
I’m no hunter either, and I haven’t seen any of these news reports that Whittington wandered into the line of fire. But from this report and some other newspeople’s description of the accident, I don’t think any reasonable person can credibly suggest that Cheney had his gun pointing skyward and Whittington managed to get in the way. It more credibly seems that Cheney was aiming at a group of flushed quail, turning to track their movement, and elevating his gun as the quail flew up, and, so swinging, accidently fired on Whittington (who, according to the report was about 30 yards away; I leave it to those more mathematically minded to recreate the angles and distances and vectors and whatever else.)
I’m amazed-no where have I yet seen anybody making a Ralphie from A Christmas Story jokes.
One version of the spin I heard early on was that Cheney thought a bird had just “flushed” and swung around to try to nail it before it got into the air. Because those tame, farm-raised “quailtards” are dámņáblÿ hard to hit if they can get more than a few feet off the ground, you know.
Just taking a shot here (ba dum bump) but most of you haven’t had a close proximity to quail, right?
They can fly but in my experience they mostly scurry around the ground in nice long lines. Cute as the dickins. I’m not a hunter myself but I’m thinking that if I were I’d be taking a shot that was either at ground level or somewhere around Lawyer level to get as many as possible.
Firing straight up in the air might work for ducks, bald eagles or hang gliders but I’m not sure it’s a viable quail hunting strategy.
Nice to see that this story has knocked the Mohammed cartoon story right off the front pages. Why wprry about the supression of free speech when we have a REAL scandle to worry about? ( and yeah, there should be room for both…but there never is.)
Hey, you too can pretend to be the VP at http://www.weddingcrashersmovie.com/index_quail.htm
You can shoot the low flying birds or just wait until the shadow of a fellow hunter pops up in front of you and blow him away. Scream “Ðìçk, No!” for full comedic effect.
I’m no expert either, but The Daily Show seemed to indicate that because this was a game farm, the birds were all either wingless, or had their wings clipped. As they put it, “to level the playing field.” Cheney’s an old guy, you know.
well, i cannot speak to whether cheney was negligent or not – he may very well have been. but when hunting for quail, you normally try to shoot them as soon as you can, when they are lower to the ground and closer to you. the more distance they put between themselves and you, the harder they are to hit. it is very common to be shooting level, or nearly level, to the ground – depending on your height, you might even be shooting a little bit down (though if you can’t draw a bead, or miss them low, you track them until you can get a shot, so sometimes you are shooting up).
anyway, the fact that he hit a standing person is not out of the question by any means, regardless of what a photo op shot would show, and the fact that he was shooting level to the ground in and of itself is NOT an indication of negligence.
on a related note, does anyone think that this incident might be the final event that causes cheney to resign?
does anyone think that this incident might be the final event that causes cheney to resign?
Are you kidding? He didn’t resign after helping to kill thousands in Iraq – why should he resign after wounding one guy in Texas?
I don’t hunt, either, but my step-dad down in Texas is a hunter. He was telling me once about Quail hunting, and I think I remember him saying something about how Quail don’t fly very high at all.
I’ve seen various hunters comment on this in the media. They say two things. A hunter has a “shooting zone” of about 130 degrees in front of him. Shooting outside this zone is unsafe. It appears Cheney swung around following a bird and shot behind him. Also the hunters said you should not shoot if you cannot see sky under the bird. In other words not blindly into the brush.
Sounds like contrary to the White House spin, Cheney is was a negligent and unsafe hunter.
One more thing. How does a man surrounded by secret service agents have some one “sneak up behind him”?
So now the “Victim wandered into the line of fire”? Oy. I swear to god this incident is quickly becoming a parody of the Bush administration’s usual pr tactics. I mean, already we’ve got the attempt to keep it quiet, the confused flailing about of the (literally) uniformed White House officials when questioned about the incident, now we’ve got the the White House pr flacks trying to avoid accountability by shifting blame, this time onto the victim. Pretty soon Bush will come out with a speech stating that Cheney has to keep hunting in order to protect us from the quail.
Seriously though, what probably happened is that Cheney & Whittington were probably waiting in the brush for the birds to be released. Cheney heard or saw his friend move and, his hearing not being as good as it once was, mistook it for the quail and swung around to track the sound. (Yes, you do shoot towards the ground when hunting quail, so hitting Whittington would have been easy.) Maybe he saw or thought he saw some quail in that direction. If the sun was in his eyes then that would have made it difficult for an elderly man with poor vision to register Whittington & the orange vest (I presume) he was wearing in his line of vision. He probably fired without thinking, and didn’t realize his error until it was too late.
It’s basically a case of a guy who is too old & whose health is too poor to be doing this kind of thing, but keeps doing it anyway (hence the ambulance following him around). Lots of hunting accidents happen this way. The only difference this time is that the person involved happened to be the VP.
You guys just don’t understand this, do you. Whittington can fly. Pretty easy to be accidentally shot by a fellow hunter then.
Why does everyone care so much? To me, this is a quick little story that no one cares about. What exactly is the significance?
If it is a case of “As the White House attempts to claim that they intentionally waited for a public citizen to report the story to the press…” (with an apropos analogy to Pee Wee), then I understand, but the focus for all media outlets (regardless of political persuasion) is off for that.
In all seriousness, I think the media is tired of being bashed for their cowardly kowtowing to Muslim extremists, so this comes as a welcome relief.
At least the press core finally got the opportunity to grill the president’s spokesman and ask the question on everyone’s lips: “Would this be much more serious if the man had died?” (Editors note: I didn’t make that up?)
Why do people care? Well, for one thing, it’s pretty funny in a sick and twisted way.
Now, I’m not a hunter, but I support anyone’s right to hunt of they like. However, I can’t for the life of me figure out what is so sporting about these canned hunts where “hunters” drive up to the covey in their car, then shoot these farm-raised birds whose wings may have been clipped on the ground.
There’s been quite a bit of speculation on the blogosphere as to whether Cheney had been drinking, but I haven’t seen any evidence to support that allegation.
What I think is the reason for the delay in telling the press and the little wooden boy in the White House is that, after they realized Cheney had screwed up, they put the cones of silence down until they could develop the right spin. The day’s delay also enabled them to make sure that they could report Wittingham’s condition as “very stable”*. Of course, he had to go and have a heart attack the next day and throw a monkey wrench in that plan.
Since the neocon mantra is “never apologize, never admit to a mistake.” The official spin had to blame Wittingham. I’m sure a big wad of cash fell into the lap of “Pioneer” Armstrong, the owner of the ranch, so that she would support the spin, too.
I’d love ask the White House press, after the cherry picked intelligence used to justify Operation Fix Daddy’s Mistake, the bungling of Katrina, the Abramhoff scandal, and the wiretapping controversy, why the hëll is this the issue they’re fired up about, but I think the real reason this story has legs now is because of the fact that Cheney’s office has yet to show any responsibility on his part. If they had just issued a statement saying, “It was an accident and the VP has apologized to Mr. Wittingham and his family,” he still would have been the butt of jokes from the late night crew, but the press would not have had anything to harp over.
*Side note: This is the first time I’ve ever seen a patient’s condition listed as very stable in a press release.
BTW, if you ever want to know how not to do spin control when your guy screws up, this is it:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/3658290.html
BTW, if you haven’t seen the Daily Show’s take on it, it is just too freakin’ funny.
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/02/13.html
I’m no hunter, but my understanding from those who are is that if you are the one holding the weapon, the accident is your fault — barring bizarre situations like someone jumping on you and forcing you to pull the trigger, which I’m surprised hasn’t been alleged yet.
I agree with others above — this is starting to read like a parody of every other shift-the-blame tactic the administration’s ever used.
And as to “why should we care?” — well, one, because someone might possibly die with the sitting VP as a direct and obvious cause, which hasn’t been true in 200 years. Two … because, to paraphrase Stalin, thousands of deaths in Iraq are a statistic as viewed by the public. This sort of incident isn’t.
I don’t think it’s worth the hoopla it’s getting in comparison to other things, but I think that’s more the fault of previous things the press has underplayed than it is this. I’m delighted that Cheney is finally getting the negative PR and massive disapproval that he has so richly deserved for eons, and that the public is continuing to wake up to just how swooningly incompetent this administration is at basic truth-telling.
(Oh — and as to “very stable”, it might be worth pointing out that the term “stable” is more or less meaningless as a medical term. If “stable” means that various vital signs aren’t significantly changing, then being DEAD could be considered “very stable”.)
TWL
I’d love ask the White House press, after the cherry picked intelligence used to justify Operation Fix Daddy’s Mistake, the bungling of Katrina, the Abramhoff scandal, and the wiretapping controversy, why the hëll is this the issue they’re fired up about
I suppose it’s just a matter of time before Karl Rove is accused of creating the entire incident to distract attention away from Katrina, Abramhoff, etc etc. In much the same way that he made a pact with Sutekh, the Egyptian God of Storms and Violence, to use Katrina to distract attention from the Valery Plame scandel, itself a phoney story meant to keep us from asking to many questions about Grandpa Bush’s Nazi connections to the Philadelphia experiment and the Allende Letters. I could go on but I’m sure you get the point.
I’m delighted that Cheney is finally getting the negative PR and massive disapproval that he has so richly deserved for eons, and that the public is continuing to wake up to just how swooningly incompetent this administration is at basic truth-telling.
Here’s the thing though; if the press makes TOO big a deal out of this and continues to ask stupid “Would this be much more serious if the man had died?” type questions it will end up not hurting Cheney at all. Quite the opposite.
Never underestimate the ability of Democrats and the Press (but I repeat myself) to overplay a hand.
The short answer to the question of hitting a man and not a bird is that buckshot spreads out to cover a wider radius as it travels. The spray from a shotgun can cover a good sized bear if you are far enough away. I’d imagine that Whittington had to be some distance from Cheney to have the minimal initial damage that news reports have suggested.
I’m more intrigued by the fact that Cheney was committing an illegal act by hunting without a fully authorized licence to begin with…. cause we have all known for some time that he doesn’t clearly identify his intended target before going after it and that he has a propensity for shooting his own mouth off constantly, so the incident itself doesn’t surprise me in the least.
Fred
While it’s true that the term “stable” is not an official medial term, it’s still widely used in a press releases. The fact that they tacked on “very” just made it an even more obvious spin.
As for the press overplaying their hand, I don’t know if there is anything they can do to make Cheney look better in all this. By first having his spinmeisters blame the victim, then hiding under the radar, Cheney has done just about everything he could to look like an insensitive prìçk.
In fact, I’d say there’s an almost Chappiquidick aura to their response to this.
While it may be fun to caricature Ðìçk as a trigger happy Elmer Fudd, the handling of this incident speaks volumes about the mentality and priorities of the VP. If Wittingham does die, he’s going to have a hëll of a problem trying to convince people that now he feels bad about it.
I’m pretty sure the VP was hunting quail with birdshot, not buckshot. At the distance Whittington was apparently standing, buckshot would have fatal.
oops… please replace buck with bird. My bad for not proofing my post or putting more thought into what I was typing.
Well the press has been saying buckshot a lot so don’t feel bad.
I would guess that, if one WERE to hunt quail with buckshot, there wouldn’t be a whole lot left of the quail. Shredded tweet.
Others have touched on this, but just to bring it all together…
Quail do not fly very high, or for very long distances. Once they are flushed out, they tend to fly quickly to a nearby spot of cover hoping to hide from whatever is hunting them.
The spread from a shotgun expands the further away from the barrel it travels. Also, because the shot (pellets) are so light individually, they lose a great deal of potential energy quickly. Fortunately for all involved, it doesn’t take much to kill a small bird, but does take more to kill something human sized. Up close, a shotgun is a devestating weapon, but over distance it is not. Especially if the distance of 30 yards quoted above is accurate.
Whittington did wander into the field of fire, but remember the field of fire expands the further away from the gun. Cheney probably wasn’t even aiming right at Whittington when it happened because of the way the shot spreads.
Images on the news show the pellets hit him on the upper left shoulder, chest and face. This indicates that the shot was not level with the ground, but rather angled up.
Hey, I’ll bet there are a lot of liberals who are now sorry they complained so much about Scalia spending time hunting with Ðìçk Cheney!
I’m not an expert on guns, but my understanding is that a 28-gauge is a fairly lightweight gun, suitable for small game. In contrast, a 12-gauge would have produced quailburgers, but I’ve seen press reports use the wrong gauge in describing the shotgun as well.
Just as a fun mental excercise, let’s close our eyes and pretend that the name of the man who accidentally shot an elderly contributor was named Kerry, Gore, or Clinton. Imagine how this story would be playing on Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity now.
I was greatly amused at Scott Adams’ comment on the incident: http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2006/02/best_cheney_com.html
Just as a fun mental excercise, let’s close our eyes and pretend that the name of the man who accidentally shot an elderly contributor was named Kerry, Gore, or Clinton. Imagine how this story would be playing on Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity now.
Pretty much as over the top as it’s playing on CNN and MSNBC. Which just goes to show…something.
And Al Gore should be doubly happy over this, since it also knocked his awful speech in Saudi Arabia off of the radar scope, in the unlikely event that the mainstream media was going to hold him accountable for it.
I guess they’ll have to change Ðìçk Cheney’s Secret Sevice code name to ‘Friendly Fire.’ Seriously though, if this is an example of our vice president’s skill with a gun, maybe we should be thankful for all those deferrments that kept him out of Vietnam.
A hunter has a “shooting zone” of about 130 degrees in front of him. Shooting outside this zone is unsafe. It appears Cheney swung around following a bird and shot behind him. Also the hunters said you should not shoot if you cannot see sky under the bird. In other words not blindly into the brush.
As apparently one of the few hunters in this thread, basically yes – this is right. My father (Alaskan native, experienced hunter cuz, hëll, how else do you get your food in the middle of nowhere Alaska) and I have been trying to figure out the logistics of this since it happened, and the only thing we can come up with is “wha?” If it is true that Wittington was behind Cheney, then Cheney basically spun around and fired blindly and unsafely when he knew his hunting companion had stayed behind to collect shot quail. You don’t spin around and shoot like that when you don’t have every member of your hunting party on the same line, to prevent this very thing from happening.
Additionally, Wittington has been reported wearing his hunting vest (bright bright orange) – which actually surprises me. I thought the spin doctors would make it out that he had taken it off, to more fully put the blame on him.
Anyhow, any way you cut it, from a hunting standpoint, Cheney is at fault for this, and did something stupid to boot. It’s the kind of “mistake” an inexperienced hunter would make, not someone with years of experience.
Went quail hunting once, Once, and now that I think about it both of the other ‘hunters’ were Repubs.
Anyway, it was my first and only time to go and I got the instructions on how I was supposed to know where everyone was at all times. And to aim to the sky etc.
Well we were walking through some brush and small trees, and some birds fly up and both guys turn around and start shotting. Who was behind them? Me.
I hit the dirt and called them something or another, they both laughed and told about how they had been spotted with buck shot many times.
I guess shooting each other is par for the course in quail hunting with Repubs
I haven’t been watching CNN or MSNBC lately, so maybe you can tell if they’re portraying it as a massive coverup of a clumsly attempted murder by the VP, because I have zero doubt that’s the way the story would be playing on Hannity and Sock Puppet if this had happened to Kerry or Gore.
I hit the dirt and called them something or another, they both laughed and told about how they had been spotted with buck shot many times.
Slate.com had an article yesterday that cited a statistic that said that while in general, hunting accidents were on the decline in Texas, there was one form of hunting in which accidents were on the rise: Quail Hunting.
BTW, how come nobody has asked where Dan Quayle was during this?
Cheney just announced that he’s going to break his silence in an interview tonight at 6.
What a shocker, it’s going to be aired on the Ministry of Propaganda Channel, aka, Fox “News.”
I have zero doubt that’s the way the story would be playing on Hannity and Sock Puppet if this had happened to Kerry or Gore.
And one of the benefits of these kinds of arguments is that you can’t be proven wrong. That’s also why, like creationism, they aren’t of much value.
I don’t quite get the level of attention this is getting, though I admit I am inclined to think the handling of it is sort of part for the course for this administration – don’t say anything until you’re backed into the corner with proof and then be unapologetic and non-committal where most people would be genuflecting with shame.
In fairness to them, however, opening your mouth on national tv and taking responsibility for this kind of thing is a recipe for litigation, even if it is a flat-out stupid mistake. That’s a good reason to shut the hëll up, however, not to have Mary Matilin stand up and repeat that no mistakes or missteps were made, at all. That’s not being prudent, that’s just bald-faced lying.
Yeah, no question it was poorly handled. Clinton would have immediately come out and looked so sorrowful and weepy that his ratings would have gone up.
I noticed you didn’t answer my question, Bill. Is that how they’re spinning it on Fox and MSNBC?
In fairness to them, however, opening your mouth on national tv and taking responsibility for this kind of thing is a recipe for litigation, even if it is a flat-out stupid mistake.
I seriously doubt that any litigation against Cheney would ever proceed. First of all, it’s not like he did anything really bad, like tell Willington he wanted to have sex with him in a hotel room. Second, Willington is well known player in Texas GOP politics. Suing the VP would ruin many of his connections in that biz.
That’s a good reason to shut the hëll up, however, not to have Mary Matilin stand up and repeat that no mistakes or missteps were made, at all. That’s not being prudent, that’s just bald-faced lying.
Which is why most good PR reps advise their clients to get the facts out fast and on their terms, rather than stonewalling. If you act like you have something to hide, people will assume that you do.
While the news coverage is overkill, what else is new? If it bleeds it leads. Natalie Hollman (sp?), Jon Benet Ramsey, The “summer of the shark” etc etc. It’s got marginally more news value than a couple of whales trapped in the ice.
UGH.
Should have said, “CNN and MSNBC” and Whittington, not Whillington.
I’m tired. Gonna take a nap now.
There’s been quite a bit of speculation on the blogosphere as to whether Cheney had been drinking, but I haven’t seen any evidence to support that allegation.
Currently on Yahoo, previously on MSNBC (but already thrown down the memory hole), more details oat Raw Story.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/thenation/20060215/cm_thenation/160212;_ylt=A86.I1cDX_ND4h4BGQj9wxIF;_ylu=X3oDMTBjMHVqMTQ4BHNlYwN5bnN1YmNhdA–
http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Beer_quote_pulled_from_MSNBC_Cheney_0215.html
————————-
I’m sure a big wad of cash fell into the lap of “Pioneer” Armstrong, the owner of the ranch, so that she would support the spin, too.
$160,000 in 2004.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11920.htm
Why is this getting such big news?
THE SITTING VICE PRESIDENT SHOT SOMEONE!
This has happened, what, one other time in HISTORY?
As for press-medical spin ie “very stable”
“Minor heart attack”
Now, I’m no doctor, but I watch House…I’m not sure there is such thing as a minor heart attack…non-lethal heart attack, sure….
Two observations:
One: in an offline conversation last night, someone pointed out that the real mystery in the Cheney hunting incident is not the shooting, but the complete disappearance of the media’s “body watcher” — the pool reporter assigned to follow Cheney around on the chance that he should do something newsworthy (like, for instance, shooting somebody). The reportage so far clearly indicates that Bush had been notified of the incident within a couple of hours, and that the county sheriff had also been called by the Secret Service. Also, of course, there’ll have been an ambulance (or med-evac chopper) taking Whittington to the hospital. But somehow, the pool Cheney-watcher apparently failed to notice all this activity….
Two: I am greatly bemused at the idea that you must be trying to cover something up if you don’t alert the media until the morning after it happened. As I reconstruct, the shooting occurred at 5:30 or so Saturday afternoon — whereupon in the real world, a normal person’s reaction will be to concentrate on getting help for the injured person, making sure his family’s been notified, and notifying the appropriate legal authorities — all of which, in fact, Cheney and his companions did. I am utterly unsurprised that it took them till the next morning to get a sufficient handle on what had happened to be ready to contact the press — which, in fact, Katharine Armstrong did. (Again, it’s interesting to note that there apparently wasn’t a pool reporter anywhere within shouting distance.)
I don’t see any political scandal here; I see a classic illustration of the increasing disconnect between “media time” and “real world time”.
Here’s the thing though; if the press makes TOO big a deal out of this and continues to ask stupid “Would this be much more serious if the man had died?” type questions it will end up not hurting Cheney at all. Quite the opposite.
I don’t think so. Not this time.
Cheney broke established hunting rules, went hunting without a proper license, and as a result a man may die as the direct result of his actions. I don’t think any particular overkill on the part of the press is going to make him coming out as the sympathetic party here.
I’ll agree that press overkill can have a nasty rebound effect at times — but I don’t think this is one of those times, unless you’re suggesting that the result is a public “yawn, here we go again” next time it happens.
And one of the benefits of these kinds of arguments is that you can’t be proven wrong. That’s also why, like creationism, they aren’t of much value.
Oh, come on, Bill. Stop spinning for a change and look at the history.
When Vince Foster killed himself, a large number of right-wing pundits and other assorted blowhards (Falwell, anyone?) strongly suggested that rather than suicide, it was covered-up murder.
That’s not speculation on liberals’ part as to what the right wing would or might do. That’s documented fact about what they’re previously DONE in the closest thing to a similar situation.
You’re right that the prediction you were responding to can’t be proven wrong, but your statement that the prediction is valueless flies in the face of recent historical evidence.
TWL
But Tim, the three separate investigations that concluded that Foster committed suicide were just further proof that he was murdered!
Two: I am greatly bemused at the idea that you must be trying to cover something up if you don’t alert the media until the morning after it happened.
In all honesty, I don’t think there’s anything really being covered up, but the delay does generate the appearance of a cover up, which may be just as damaging.
What we really saw was a bungled attempt to “manage” the story in a way that shifts as much blame off of Ðìçk’s shoulders. Unfortunately for him, it clearly has backfired. No one bought the initial “blame the victim” spin. That also raises people’s suspicions that maybe they aren’t getting the whole story.
John:
>One: in an offline conversation last night, someone pointed out that the real mystery in the Cheney hunting incident is not the shooting, but the complete disappearance of the media’s “body watcher” — the pool reporter assigned to follow Cheney around on the chance that he should do something newsworthy (like, for instance, shooting somebody).
Where do you think that Cheney spent his second shell? 😉
1) I don’t believe this has ever happened before. I read somewhere else that the Aaron Burr/Alexander Hamilton duel did not involve a *sitting* Vice President.
2)
And one of the benefits of these kinds of arguments is that you can’t be proven wrong. That’s also why, like creationism, they aren’t of much value.
Sure they can be proven right or wrong. All you need to do is find a comparable situation and see how Hannity or other Conservative media handled it.
For example…who was that guy in the Clinton administration that committed suicide? How quickly was the conservative media suggesting it wasn’t suicide and Clinton actually had him killed? Can we go back and research this?