(2006-02-15) — Vice President Dick Cheney has spent four sleepless nights, poring over popularity poll numbers, analyzing focus group data and crafting an emotional speech designed to turn last weekend’s accidental shooting of a hunting buddy from a PR nightmare into “a comeback-kid moment.”
“We’ve seen this all before,” said an unnamed former White House official who helped a previous president react to his own public relations challenges. “Right now, Dick Cheney is probably standing in front of his bathroom mirror to practice biting his lip, dropping his chin and making other dramatic facial expressions that simulate genuine remorse.”
The vice president’s grief, insiders said, is not over the shotgun wound suffered by his friend, Harry Whittington, but over his own failure to notify the White House press corps immediately after the incident.
In an ironic turnabout for the former “darling of the news media,” Mr. Cheney finds himself at odds with the very journalists who helped him craft his public persona as an affable and wise man of the people.
Anonymous sources said that the vice president knew he had a disaster on his hands when NBC TV reporter David Gregory called White House spokesman Scott McClellan a “jerk.”
“When a man of the caliber of David Gregory turns on you, it’s time to freshen that résumé,” said one unnamed source. “The sad thing is that this whole tragedy could have been avoided if Dick Cheney had understood that his primary obligation is to the journalists who made him what he is today.”
In related news, the vice president’s spokesman denied that Mr. Cheney has asked President George Bush to divert attention from the quail hunting accident by “bombing something overseas.”
7 responses so far ↓
1 NIF // Feb 15, 2006 at 7:12 am
POW! Right in the kisser
Today’s dose of NIF - News, Interesting & Funny … It’s a Wednesday, again
2 Common Sense Junction » Blog Archive » Tsk, Tsk // Feb 15, 2006 at 9:31 am
[...] The wisdom of Scott Ott sparkles in this parody of the MSM’s hand wringing over its inability to gain traction to further demonize and denigrate Dick Cheney. As my old grand pappy used to say, they had already shot their wad BEFORE Cheney’s hunting accident. That leaves them when two choices: They can tsk, tsk, or just tsk. [...]
3 All Things Beautiful // Feb 15, 2006 at 2:34 pm
Another Black Eye For The MSM
In the absence of any pressing news these days — other than Iran’s nuclear weapons development crisis, the election of Hamas terrorists in Palestine, ongoing worldwide Muslim riots and killing in reaction to a cartoon, Al Gore’s near sedition while …
4 The Median Sib // Feb 15, 2006 at 11:02 pm
Cheney Speaks Truth to Power
So Vice President Dick Cheney talks to Fox News today. Here are a few of his words: “I had a bit of the feeling that the press corps was upset because, to some extent, it was about them - they didn’t like the idea that we called the Corpus Christi Ca…
5 Pros and Cons » Cheney Takes Responsibility // Feb 16, 2006 at 1:02 am
[...] Scrappleface weighs in with a typically-hilarious observation. [...]
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