Common Sense Meets the Irrational Press

Tim Russert, David Gregory, and Maureen Dowd faced off against Mary Matalin and Paul Gigot on yesterday's Meet the Press.

The remarks of the anti-Cheney lib contingent were utterly foolish compared to the measured comments that the conservatives offered.

The libs continue to shoot themselves in the foot over this hunting accident. It's time for them to stop the bleeding and drop it -- fast.

David Gregory couldn't even muster up the integrity to fully accept responsibility for his attacks on Scott McClellan last week. He made an apology for his unprofessional behavior, but then he said he would "make no apologies."

It must be that parallel universe he calls home.

Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff was Russert's first guest. Hurricane Katrina dominated the interview. Levees, Fema, Michael Brown -- it seemed like a rerun from early last September.

The fun didn't really start until it was roundtable time.

Roundtable Transcript

Gregory's Apology/ Apology Retraction Transcript

HIGHLIGHTS

This exchange was great.

Russert was trying to point out inconsistencies in the information about the Vice President's hunting accident. He brought up the alcohol cover-up theory.

MR. RUSSERT: The suggestion being that perhaps there had been drinking going on that afternoon, and it could have been detected that evening as opposed to the next morning. And again, pointing to Ms. Armstrong’s own words, quote, “None in the hunting party was drinking alcohol, Armstrong said. No, zero, zippo. No one was drinking.” And then on Wednesday, the vice president, with FOX News, said, quote, “I had a beer at lunch. After lunch we take a break, go back to ranch headquarters. Then we took about an hour-long tour of the ranch. We didn’t go back into the field to hunt quail until, oh, sometime after 3 p.m.” Was alcohol in any way, shape or form consumed during the afternoon? And should we accept the president’s “a beer” as literally one beer?

Let the Games begin!

MS. MATALIN: What Katharine Armstrong was answering is a literal fact going to the question she was asked, which is always the case on the Armstrong ranch, you don’t drink and hunt, and you don’t hunt with drinkers. And that’s what the sheriff reported, that’s what she reported. It is true that the vice president had a beer at lunch, and let me ask anybody sitting at this table who knows the vice president, has known him for many years, has seen him in social situations, he’s known not to be a drinker. But let me ask you a more logical question—you think the Secret Service would let the vice president out, tanked up, with a loaded gun, or let him be around anybody who’s drunk with a loaded gun? It just defies common sense that the press would even go there. And that’s why these adversarial question-and- answer periods set up the presumption that Cheney would be drunk, or having to deny that Cheney was drunk, as opposed to presuming what we all know, that he doesn’t drink, he wouldn’t hunt and drink, the Secret Service wouldn’t let anybody around him who is drinking and hunting.

That’s why we get into the—that’s why we take our time, try to slow down, try to get as many facts out as possible before we engage in what ended up, as was the case this weekend, happens way too frequently inside this bubble, inside this parallel universe of a feeding frenzy in the briefing room.

HAHAHAHAHA

I loved this:

But let me ask you a more logical question—you think the Secret Service would let the vice president out, tanked up, with a loaded gun, or let him be around anybody who’s drunk with a loaded gun? It just defies common sense that the press would even go there. And that’s why these adversarial question-and- answer periods set up the presumption that Cheney would be drunk, or having to deny that Cheney was drunk, as opposed to presuming what we all know, that he doesn’t drink, he wouldn’t hunt and drink, the Secret Service wouldn’t let anybody around him who is drinking and hunting.

It does defy common sense. Not only does Matalin make the point that speculation about Cheney being drunk at the time of the accident is completely ridiculous, she really rips the press.

Russert went on to set up NBC's chief White House correspondent David Gregory with an opportunity to do some damage control.

Of course, Gregory went off the deep end repeatedly last week at the White House press gaggles and briefings.

Read details of Gregory's tantrums here and here.

Russert ran a bit from Gregory's highlight reel. Then, Stretch had the chance to apologize for the lack of professionalism he displayed in his questioning of Scott McClellan. Maybe I should say his assault of McClellan.

MR. RUSSERT: Looking back at that a few days later, your sense?

MR. GREGORY: I think I made a mistake. I think it was inappropriate for me to lose my cool with the press secretary representing the president. I don’t think it was professional of me. I was frustrated, I said what I said, but I think that you should never speak that way, as my wife reminded me, number one. And number two, I think it created a diversion from some of the serious questions in the story, so I regret that. I was wrong, and I apologize.

The old "I apologize, BUT...."

But I think what—what’s interesting about all of this is that Mary and others in the White House have been eager to stoke this as a false debate between the vice president and the White House press corps, attempting to cast this as the White House press corps is a ping-pong in the culture wars. The reality is that that false debate obscures some real facts. You laid out some of them in terms of questions that were raised about how the vice president initially disclosed this, making the decision to not disclose it himself and have Katharine Armstrong do it.

It also overlooks a very important point, and that is there was disagreement, as Mary well knows, within the White House about how this was handled: the question of why the vice president didn’t call the president. Also the fact that there were some White House advisers who told me this week, it made the president look bad, it raised questions about who was really running the rodeo in the White House.

The vice president created these questions. It’s also emblematic of the rather secretive style with the press by the vice president. And so I think it—it’s fair to disagree with the White House press corps, or with me, or the White House press corps generally, I think, is more important, in terms of how we go about answers. But I, for one, don’t apologize for pushing hard for answers. I think people who view the news or view what I do for a partisan lens may think I was making a political statement. I was not. I make no apologies for pushing hard for information because sometimes it’s hard to get.

So, Stretch apologized but he makes no apologies. Got it.

Spoken like a true lib. Spoken like Bill Clinton or John Kerry.

MR. RUSSERT: Bill Crystal, the editor of the Weekly Standard, said this: “The White House press corps is crazy and pompous, and a lot of them are personally obnoxious as well. Instead of asking about Iran going nuclear, Hamas setting up a government in Palestine, 42 of the 60 questions to Scott McClellan were the White House press corps whining that they didn’t get a phone call late Saturday night.”

How funny!

I agree with Crystal. That's America's premier press corps in action, some of the best and the brightest in journalism. Last week was certainly a shining moment for them.

MR. GREGORY: Right. And let me just make one other point. Again, it’s easy to try to make this a debate about the White House press corps vs. the vice president. No matter how you feel about the White House press corps, and—and we’re worthy of criticism, and we can take our lumps—this is about how the vice president chooses to communicate to the American people.

Gregory's response to Crystal's perfect characterization: "Riiiiiiiiiight."

He is a fool for continuing to whine about how the story was communicated to the American people.

Note to Stretch: Vice President Cheney is not required to call you.

Gregory is complaining that the story wasn't delivered to him on a silver platter. Aren't reporters supposed to go out and get the story?

Paul Gigot landed some hard hits of his own.

MR. RUSSERT: Paul Gigot, you weighed in with an editorial on Wednesday, and a rather ironic one, I might say. “In the interest of restraining the imperial presidency, we have put together the following cover-up time line with the crucial questions that deserve to be answered.” And this is part of it: “Five thirty p.m., Saturday. Who is Harry Whittington and whom does he lobby for? Does he know Scooter Libby? Seven p.m., who else did Mr. Rove talk to about this in the interim? Was Valerie Plame ever mentioned? Eleven a.m., Sunday. Has Ms. Armstrong ever worked for Halliburton? One thirty p.m., everyone involved confirms more or less everything, or so the official line goes. Their agreement is very suspicious. As for the Beltway press corps, it has once again earned the esteem in which it is held by the American public.”

What a great editorial! Very nice work by Gigot!

MR. PAUL GIGOT: It seemed like satire was appropriate to the occasion. Not looking at this, by the way, David, from—you know, I didn’t speak to anybody from the White House or the vice president’s office all week on this. It was looking at it from outside the Beltway and saying where did this story stand on the relative scale of importance? Looked to me to be a human tragedy, the vice president made a mistake, it was probably in not disclosing it himself, letting someone else do it. But that’s a relatively minor mistake. I think scandal standards are declining in Washington if this becomes another big, huge scandal which this is supposed to be a metaphor for for governing, a bunker of secrecy which is, I think, what some of the Democrats in the Senate were saying. This is a metaphor for the way this administration operates. I just don’t think that’s true. And so I think mockery was appropriate.

Then, Maureen Dowd starts twisting her hair and makes an embarrassing attempt to alluringly pout her thin lips and tries to explain why Cheney's behavior was the most important story of last week, and this week as well, and maybe the week after that, and the week after that.

MS. MAUREEN DOWD: Well, I think that the reason this story has evoked such fascination is because the vice president is like the phantom. You know, we hear the creak of the door as he passes, but we don’t really know what he’s up to. We don’t know his schedule. We don’t always know where he is. We don’t know what democratic institution he’s blowing off at any given minute, and so this allowed us to see how his behavior and judgement operated pretty much in real time—with the delay, but pretty much in real time.

And it covered all the problems of the Bush/Cheney administration: secrecy and stonewalling, then blowing off the rules that are at the heart of our democracy, then using a filter to try and put the truth out in a way that would most suit their political needs, and then bad political judgement in bungling a crisis. I mean, if there’s one thing the Republicans are great at since Reagan, it’s damage control. But he is such a control freak, you know, he doesn’t even care about the damage.

Cheney blew "off the rules that are at the heart of our democracy"?

Which rules would those be?

Stories involving the Vice President must only come from Washington reporters? Is that a "rule" that the Framers had in mind?

Yeah, that's the first thing I think of when I reflect on the heart of American democracy.

Sure. I feel that my rights as an American were abused because the story of the hunting accident came from a Corpus Christi news outlet rather than one of the big boys.

How goofy!

Then, Dowd calls Cheney a "control freak."

How ironic!

She's the dominatrix in this picture.

Mary Matalin responds to Dowd's inanity with a knock out punch.

MS. MATALIN: I love this reference to blowing off the institutions of democracy like freedom of the press.

...Let me pose a question here. What if I called David, instead of Katherine calling the Corpus Christi Caller-Times and said, “I’m just going to talk to you.” I suppose David’s first reaction, or any of his colleagues would be, “No, let’s go through the process. Let’s call the pool. Let’s get everybody involved here.” No, I know that’s not true because I’ve done this with Cheney feeding frenzies before when he’s had to go in for routine heart checks. There’s no such thing as you just put out a statement. And if I ever did want to just give it to one guy—on occasion which I did so I had the time to walk through it—they would take it. They didn’t say, “Stop! Let’s go through the process and get the whole pool there.” So it’s disingenuous. I’m not starting a false debate. We’re not undermining the hallmarks of the democratic institution, the freedom of the presss. But its much ado about nothing, or in the words of Harry Whittington, “What’s all the hoopla about?”

MR. GREGORY: OK, but Mary, if that’s the case, first of all, you know, the vice president of the United States accidentally shot a man for the first time since Aaron Burr killed Alexander Hamilton. Much different circumstance, admittedly. And the vice president’s office doesn’t feel an obligation to disclose that to the American people directly. You do it through a ranch owner in Texas? It just—it just strikes me as odd.

MS. MATALIN: It strikes you as odd because you live in a parallel universe. It did not strike Americans as odd. Press were calling me saying, “The president—the vice president needs to apologize.” He did profusely and repeatedly to the victim of his accident, who was Harry Whittington.

Exactly! The lib elite press are not representative of mainstream America.

MR. GREGORY: If you thought he did everything right, why is it that you ultimately—if the vice president said, “I did everything right,” by disclosing it the way he did, why did you do a big national interview this week?

MS. MATALIN: Because you went on a jihad, David. For four days you went on a Jihad.

How perfect is that?

I loved that she accused Stretch of going on a Jihad.

Stretch complained about Matalin's use of the word, but I think it was great -- a perfect word choice to bring home the fact that the lib press is waging a war against the Bush Administration.

After playing with her hair some more, Dowd chimes in again.

MS. DOWD: Mary, it isn’t only the press. He blows off the FISA courts, he blows off the Geneva Conventions, he blows off the U.N. to go to Iraq. He wants to blow off everything. He’s got a fever of about presidential erosion just the way he had a fever about going into Iraq.

MR. GIGOT: A hunting incident—the vice president can defend himself, but a hunting incident is a little different than the FISA court issue and the NSA.

MS. DOWD: But it’s part of same pattern.

MR. GIGOT: It is not—it’s—how about a little human empathy? I mean, he shot his friend. He’s—it’s really one of these incidents where I think we can all stand back and say, “Let’s have a debate about the FISA Courts. Let’s have a big debate about the NSA wiretaps. Those are important issues.” This is a very different kind of circumstance.

HAHAHAHA

Gigot tosses some common sense at Dowd and she becomes the deer in the headlights.

It gets better.

Russert shows a clip of Hillary Clinton making comments about the hunting accident.

SEN. HILLARY CLINTON, (D-NY): A tendency of this administration from the top all the way to the bottom is to withhold information, to resist legitimate requests for information, to refuse to be forthcoming about information that is of significance and relevant to the job that all of you do and the interest of the American people. The refusal of this administration to level with the American people on matters large and small is very disturbing.

That set up allows Matalin to really pummel the opportunistic Hillary.

MS. MATALIN: Putting aside the delicious hypocrisy there, what a missed opportunity. What if Mrs. Clinton had come out and said, “Do you know, I’m not a hunter, but lived in Arkansas and I understand this is an accident. These sorts of accidents are not infrequent. I don’t agree with Dick Cheney on many things, as you know, but I do know Lynn and Dick Cheney and I have to believe like any human being that he must be feeling awful right now for shooting his friend. And most of all, I don’t know Harry Whittington, but there’s a man lying in a hospital bed and I think we should all pass our thoughts and prayers along to him. Now, I’d like to talk about the serious business of this nation, things that I do not agree with the vice president on.” Well, Maureen Dowd, the diva of the smart set would be swooning. Moms across the country would be saying, “Hey, she thinks like me. That’s right. A guy shoots his friend. That’s not relative to my life. Let’s move on to serious issues.” No, that was a politically stupid thing to do, beside the delicious and just absurd hypocrisy of the forthcomingness of an administration.

Again, perfection.

"Maureen Dowd, the diva of the smart set would be swooning."

That's hilarious! Matalin was at the top of her game.

Gregory made a quick shift back to CYA mode. Most likely, he was aware that time was running short and he wanted to remind America that he's really not such a bad guy.

Do you think this entire roundtable segment was an NBC plot to redeem Gregory in the eyes of the public?

Anyway, he tried to apologize for his behavior again, but he couldn't resist directing some more criticism at Cheney.

MR. GREGORY: ...I think one of the things we may have missed this week is a little bit more empathy for the vice president, given what he went through.
...I do think the vice president gave voice to that personal pain extremely well this week, which is why, I for one, was so pleased to see him speak publicly about it and, you know, why I think it would have been useful to speak about it more quickly.

Lame, Stretch. Very lame.

The roundtable ended with a real gem.

MR. RUSSERT: Before we go, Maureen Dowd, take 15 seconds, what’s the most important thing we learned this week in covering this story?

MS. DOWD: Well, I do think, you know, I appreciate the vice president’s attempts to put on a sweet pink tie and, you know, to tell Wyoming about, you know, his lust as a newlywed. But I think Mary had a very difficult job humanizing Dick Cheney, because I don’t think he has given us much chance to see him as a human being.

Simply put, Dowd is crazy. The things she says amazes me. She has become a self-parody -- the lib elite at its looniest.

All in all, both Matalin and Gigot did a masterful job of deconstructing the liberal lunacy of Dowd and Gregory.

It was no contest. This bout was not a victory by decision. It was a knock out.

Dowd and Gregory were knocked out cold.
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Incredibly, the libs still think they can get more out of Quailgate.

I knew they were clueless, but I didn't realize they were this clueless.





How much longer will the lib media remain in a dither over an unfortunate hunting ACCIDENT and fail to report on matters that are truly important?

Time will tell.