The Vice President clobbered Wolf Blitzer today, once again demonstrating for the American people the important line that separates public life from private life. Wolf Blitzer is a fine reporter and a gentleman. I don't understand how he can not understand this line, or not be embarrassed in retrospect. As should be CNN.
Even when he's wrong he's right. Blitzer and CNN should be completely embarrassed, and they owe their viewers an apology, but of course not for the reasons Hewitt thinks.
The entire "interview", if you want to call it that, deserves to be fisked, but here's the part Hewitt is referring to:
BLITZER: You know, we're out of time, but a couple of issues I want to raise with you: your daughter, Mary. She's pregnant. All of us are happy she's going to have a baby. You're going to have another grandchild. Some of the -- some critics are suggesting -- for example, a statement from someone representing Focus on the Family, "Mary Cheney's pregnancy raises the question of what's best for children. Just because it's possible to conceive a child outside of the relationship of a married mother and father doesn't mean that it's best for the child." Do you want to respond to that?
CHENEY: No.
BLITZER: She's, obviously, a good daughter --
CHENEY: I'm delighted I'm about to have a sixth grandchild, Wolf.
And obviously I think the world of both my daughters and all of my grandchildren. And I think, frankly, you're out of line with that question.
BLITZER: I think all of us appreciate --
CHENEY: I think you're out of line.
BLITZER: We like your daughters. Believe me, I'm very sympathetic to Liz and to Mary. I like them both. That was a question that's come up, and it's a responsible, fair question.
CHENEY: I just fundamentally disagree with you.
BLITZER: I want to congratulate you on having another grandchild.
I guess Blitzer should consider himself lucky Big Time wasn't packing, which might explain why he was so gutless in defending his line of questioning. What exactly does Cheney "just fundamentally disagree" with here -- that Bush boosting mullahs such as James Dobson use Cheney's own daughter and future grandchild to bait the extra-chromosome crowd? That because Mary Cheney and Heather Poe live in Virginia, Poe has no parental rights to the child in the event anything happens to Mary?
And Blitzer is the one that's out of line? Bullshit. He was out of line, but only in his abject spinelessness, his mewling and cringing at Cheney's loose-limbed tirades throughout the entire interview.
Look, it's simple. It doesn't matter what the issue is, whether it's their constant bungling of every country they cluster-bomb, or the GOP's religitard backers using Cheney's donut-bumping offspring as rhetorical chum. Whenever they are called on their bullshit, they will always, always fight back with bluster and lies.
Journalists have to stop being worried about stepping on unpopular toes, or losing the "privilege" to interview someone most Americans already hold in contempt. It's bad enough that they were lapdogs when the polls were high, but we're in Nixon territory now, and have been for over a year.
It's too bad Blitzer apparently uses a peanut shell and a rubberband for a jockstrap, because it's going to require someone with actual balls to counter these tactics. Instead he met the rigors of his job with the usual courtly diffidence, and to add stupid insult to unnecessary injury, people like Hugh Halfwit still have the nerve to kick him for it.
The only thing to be truly lost by fighting back is the impression that you're a coward.
... apparently uses a peanut shell and a rubberband for a jockstrap...
ReplyDeleteHeh. Where the hell to you find these imeages, Heywood? Just what kinda people do you hang out with, out there in California -- they must have some real street cred.
However: Instead he met the rigors of his job with the usual courtly diffidence...
Perhaps you meant "defference"? Leslie B has been known to defer to all sorts of unimportant people.
But it's depressing to see how the quadruple-heart attack ogre still has the power to scare these clowns into submission on TV. Fucking lame puppies.
--M.
Hey Marius. If you've ever been to California, you know we've got a little bit of everything out here, and I've hung with 'em all, though of course with a much larger jockstrap. I roll deep, as they say in the 'hood.
ReplyDeleteI'm drawing a blank right now, as I'm bouncing between two school assignments and dicking around on the internets when I'm supposed to be doing homework, but the "peanut shell and rubberband" line is probably cribbed from a movie, most likely some sort of Animal House knock-off like Revenge of the Nerds or Porky's.
"Diffidence" means a lack of confidence or timidity, but you're right, Leslie and his chin warmer are overly deferential as well.
Ya gotta hand it to Big Time. He knows he's a hated prick, reviled almost as much by his own countrymen as by the rest of the planet. 300 years ago he would have been guillotined by now by a bunch of infighting Jacobins. Now he can sit there, tell us all to suck it, tell Leslie Blitzer to suck it -- and Blitzer, knowing how loathed Cheney is, knwoing how rare it is for Cheney to allow someone besides Brit Hume to blow him, and knowing the point he (Blitzer) was supposedly trying to make, still couldn't be bothered to defend his own question.
Cheney's got some brass ones, Wolfie has none at all. You're right, it continues to be very depressing. They are too conditioned to their assigned roles to ever be of much real use.