A few parting shots (zing!) on the whole Cheniac (ha!) shooting incident (pow!) before it becomes just one more professionally muddled memory that's kind of funny but we don't remember why.
First, stop drawing Dick like Elmer Fudd. Elmer was a hunter. An ineffective boob like Cheney, sure, but El-man actually went into the field and sought his quarry. He didn't have Wile E. Coyote chop Bugs's legs off first then turn the crippled hippity-hop loose so close to the gun-guy he could have saved a shell and just stepped on the damned thing. (Note: I haven't listened to Randi Rhodes this week, so apologies if she's already made the same joke.)
Second, abandon hope, all ye who want a straight answer from the White House. Yes, there was clearly a coverup, but it fizzled quickly and it looks like the old guy will be either fine or dead or both. The point: we all know about it now. Holding poor Scotch McClellen's feet to the firing range won't get the guy any shotter.
And fifth, despite claims and hopes to the contrary, this is not a particularly illustrative event. The Bush administration's Cheney-related f-ups involve cold, calculated maliciousness and, in extreme cases, wishing and clapping so hard that Tinkerbell not only lives but becomes a 70-story glowing Godzilla-looking thing and wins a seat in the Iraqi parliament. That is to say, potentially drunken (but deadly) fumbling isn't their scene. These guys don't drop the ball; they drive a 6-inch deck screw through the bastard and weld it to their Rolexes, then hobble the opposing team like Kathy freaking Bates so there's no danger of the ball being accidentally dislodged as they stroll toward the end zone. Except in August/September, when we're all pretty much safer in a whole 'nother country.
For those, like me, in tin-foil Napoleon-type hats, doesn't it seem a little suspicious that just when that whole spying-on-Americans thing was picking up a little gentle steam in the press, Cheney went off half-cocked and blew it out of the public discourse? Alert readers may remember "Mategate," when Laura was caught on film torturing people who looked like terrorists, and how that was completely forgotten in the seemingly innocuous can't-breathe-through-a-pretzel story.