If these reporters were at least as concerned about the former vice president's dishonesty as they were about Gibbs being mean to him, the coverage would probably be better.

Right,there wouldn't be any coverage of Cheney. Cheney is a war criminal one step ahead of the Hague. He doesn't deserve any respect.

And meanwhile, did any of the media even mention Cheney's "joke" about Obama exceeding 5 minutes?

I don't mind Gibbs' "Puckish sense of humor" but I think this Cheney love fest among the press at the current White House Briefings need to be quashed. I suggest Gibbs start calling on the chief offenders with "And do you have a Cheney Related Question today?" Or "And now if there is anyone who would like to ask a longwinded, whiny, backhanded defense of the previous administration's eight years in power style question now might be a good time." And so on.

Or he could simply refuse to answer all Cheney related program activity questions by saying

"The former Vice President, emulating Cincinnatus, has returned to private citizen status and I don't think it would be appropriate for a lowly press secretary to force this shy, retiring, bunker loving man back into the public eye."

Enough with the Puckish, bring out the Chair and the Two By Four.

aimai

If the press did it's damn job, maybe this country wouldn't be in the psychotic mess of having to deal with criminals at the top of the political food chain. Cheney should be in jail, period. Execution, optional ...

Who was that other VP treated so deferentially by the press? Anyone remember? You know, the one who wasn't a war criminal. I think he won a Nobel Prize.

Anyway, it was kid gloves all the way with that guy.

I had a comment, but aimai, you leave me speechless!

Yeah, I really don't get why Gibbs can't say something like "Why does a former Vice President deserve any more deference than he is willing to show a sitting, democratically elected (by a large margin) President?"

Note to Gibbs-stop calling on those asshats that are worried about Cheney,

If the press did it's damn job, maybe this country wouldn't be in the psychotic mess of having to deal with criminals at the top of the political food chain. Cheney should be in jail, period. Execution, optional ...

i have a cold this morning. my head is pounding; my sinuses are plugged up. i guess the press isn't doing its damn job...

if the electorate had done its damn job, maybe then this country wouldn't be in the psychotic mess of having to deal with criminals at the top of the political food chain.

god damn dick cheney's shit-filled soul to hell.

this precise phenomenon is why Obama can NOT prosecute people for torture. Look at the abject insanity of this story and magnify it by one million for Obama going after political enemies the Chicago style.

I only partially joke, but it is true. The press will not let the serious people truly be serious becuase it requires a level of seriousness from the press that they are not intellectually capable of attaining or sustaining. Thus, they reduce everything to trivial matters where verifiability and truth have little or no relevance.

I don't blame the moderate-to-liberalish democrat in the White House, I blame our corporate media.

sad.

eric

Wasn't the reporter Chip Reid of CBS?

However, probably on YouTube, but, I loved Ana Marie Cox holding the feet and tongue of Gibbs to the task by asking for more follow-up on the DADT issue. Gibbs had to mumble and stumble in attempting to find the correct wording for his answers. He became extremely nervous.

The Dick Cheney media blitz of late has a very simple explanation. It's the thoroughly expected manifestation of a deeply authoritarian, almost certainly fascist, politician who simply refuses to relinguish power. Out of office Cheney is exercising that lost power in the only way he can right now -- through the media -- now that his party and administration have been turned out by the public.

One of my fears with our current polarized politics and refusal, especially among conservatives, to work productively with their opponents is that over time this antagonism will corrupt and corrode the political culture necessary to support democratic politics. Before you can have a democratic politics, after all, you must first have a liberal and moderate culture in which differences are tolerated and respected. Otherwise politics is nothing more than brute force and raw power, as they are in societies riven by sectarian hatreds struggling to unify -- like Iraq.

There could come a time when a deeply rigid and ideological party simply refuses to step aside when it is voted out of office because the price, in their view, of defeat is too high. I think we are seeing a taste of that in Cheney's behavior since the election.

Sedition. Someone in the administration need to take away these megaphones. It is almost like Cheney is inviting/plotting something. This is an extraordinary turn of events--someone who knows they broke the law is attempting to spin the crime before the prosecution. The GOP has decided to throw Cheney out there to undermine the president and the law because he has zero to lose. If they were really "concerned" about him as messenger, he would not be on television and radio constantly. This is calculated sedition. I am tired of it. It is also extralegal--surprise, surprise. Undermining public confidence in government and the President in time of war. Inviting attack. Bad business.

Dick should be in prison; Gibbs should be looking for a new job. And, Obama needs to start stepping to plate: Getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan, shutting down Gitmo; cutting off all funding for Blackwater; holding people accountable who signed off on torture.

As I see it, Obama is being dragged into the MIC quicksand of never ending war.

Maybe Obama should be reading, Barbara W. Tuchman, "The March of Folly."

No matter Cheney's deserts, Gibbs represents the administration, and therefore has the greater power. I hold no brief for Cheney - far from it - but those in a position of power have more constraints on what they say and do than those who are not in power. There's plenty to say about Cheney without taking cheap shots. And if we don't like being called the "Democrat Party", we, or at least Gibbs, shouldn't be tossing around "cabal".

MSM, bought and paid for by the Rethugs. The only reason you use Cheney for your mouthpiece is that he has not said anything in the last 8 years so he cannot perjure himself. We both know if you give GW the mike, he will perjure himself immediately. Also, your mouthpiece is directly tied to fear game financially so he will always push the issue.

I'd love to hear what Wanda Sykes has to say about Cheney. Why doesn't one of the Sunday morning talk shows sit her down to get her views? She's just as powerful as Gingrich is.

And the WaPo gives Cheney the headline on the front page, equal treatment with the president. Imagine if Al Gore was doing this in 2001, or in 2002, or...ever. Sure they would give him equal treatment...

Although Cheney's thoughts and conduct do seem to support evolution. Obama (well, at least his words) presents reasoned thought, rational and focused action based upon such thought while respecting the rule of law, reflecting the enlightened nature of man and mankind's place in the hierarchy of life on earth. Yet Cheney presents the true nature of man--confused, ignorant, and threatened, lashing out in every direction and in any manner whatsoever at any actual or perceived threat (bed full of urine and diaper full of fecal matter), just like a wild animal that is unable to think rationally and beyond its own immediate need to feel secure, willing to do whatever it takes regardless of cause or concern.

Yeah, they were all so concerned about showing Clinton and Gore respect in 2001.

Some twit at NRO thinks Cheney would be the go-to guy if an asteroid was heading for Earth.

Has anybody calculated how Cheney & his cabal/family have profited from his vice-presidential crime spree? He was the captain of the sinking Halliburton when he appointed himself to take over the government. How's he doing now?

And if we don't like being called the "Democrat Party", we, or at least Gibbs, shouldn't be tossing around "cabal".

Well, in a lot of countries everybody knows exactly what it means when there's no election in sight but a former political leader or general starts getting up on soapboxes all over the country. I wouldn't be at all surprised if someone with Cheney's lack of respect for constitutional niceties has some idea of riding some future 9/11-level incident to power.

I seriously doubt this would work, but it's not like we haven't had attempted insurrections by the right wing in this country before. He sure as hell hasn't got the Republicans united behind him, but has got his tentacles in the government and has got a lot of media in his pocket. This deserves to be watched.

I think this is another perfect example of the insular nature of the Washington media (what's the term? Villagers?)

They often seem hell bent on creating soap opera-style drama come hell or high water...it's pretty silly actually, and they'd realize it if they only took a step back once in a while.

Hey why pay some much attention to the pretty boys and girls who are reporting from the white house. These guys and gals are probably ignored by most Americans. I think we should join them.

To be fair, though, the press also demanded respect and deference for former Vice President Al Gore whenever members of the Bush regime would critici....I'm sorry, I couldn't even finish typing that sentence as I started laughing hysterically.

Aw, c'mon - How can anyone wearing a brown suit demand respect?

I'm sure that the reporters take umbrage with the suggestion that they are partisan (bought and paid for, et cetera), even though some no doubt are that; the real problem, from my perspective, is that if they, as a whole, have any sense of history they manage to hide it extremely well. It has come to the point where those that do have some working knowledge of civics and history are getting senile (Mr. Broder, et alii); getting paid too much (Messrs. Bllitzer,... I can't remember the other Nets' anchors (see senility, above) to jeopardize their vaunted objectivity (not to mention their invitations to the parties of the great and the good); or are, in fact partisan hacks ignoring what they know on purpose. I'd love for just the white house corps to take a standardized test on basic American civics and see if they do as well as the average high schooler (Or, if one wanted to make them look really bad, compared to the average newly naturalized citizen).

well, that, or most of them could just be extremely gossipy and juvenile and run within a crowd that places heavy importance on infantile behavior and faux conflict.

H L Mencken said that the duty of the press was to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

The problem with today's news reporters is that they are solid members of the comfortable class.

Cheney is a big boy. I think he can handle it.

That's just it. Cheney is not a big boy. He is a pants piddling little coward who on 9/11 tried to order the United States Air Force to shoot down airliners full of American Citizens to protect his saggy white ass.

And he can't handle critism now, though he tries mightily to dish it out.

Let's see, Cheney lies, spins the record, makes up stuff out of whole cloth and is waging an unprecedented campaign against the current administration. Oh, and he chided the President for making a speech longer than five minutes. Nobody made Cheney wait to start his talk - that was his own craven decision. And Gibbs gets grief for little jabs? With all the concern about losing the journalistic strength of newspapers, I think it's already gone missing.

Crypto fascist corporate media covers their collective asses and defends war criminal Cheney. Wash rinse repeat.

More depressing is the traction the Neo Con narratives are gaining and it appears for the time being that Obama is bogged down by Cheney and his apparatchiks. However more depressing than that was Dick Cheney salivating for another terrorist attack, conflating Iraq and 9/11, and being an overall demagogue and not being called out for recklessly endangering the United States.

If these reporters were at least as concerned about the former vice president's dishonesty as they were about Gibbs being mean to him, the coverage would probably be better.

Given that newspaper journalism is a job with a very small future, and given that newspapers are uniformly owned by rightwing asshats, the reporters are only demonstrating they know which side of the bread their butter is on. Expect to see this continue, as the downsizing of newspapers leaves them with one type of "creative typist" on staff - the craven hack. It's already happened to the neighborhood-advertiser-and-third-rate-litterbox-liner formerly known as the Los Angeles Times, whose (recently promoted) DC bureau chief got that job ater writing a tell-all about how he "didn't get" Obama during the campaign and was the source of three different dustups due to misreporting of an event by a reporter - and he was proud of this.

What Aimai said above. Wish I'd thought of it!

Truth holds no value for media these days. In fact, truth often gets in the way of a good "duel" that will certainly boost ratings.

I was listening to NPR this morning, and the jackass du jour had Dana Milbank on and said, "but really, the main question is who got the upper hand?" Seriously, thats what he said and Milbank went on about how Obama was "cerebrial" and how that put him at a disadvantage against Cheney's fear mongering.

Because of course, we the public are just a bunch of moronic idiots who respond only to our baser instincts.

Fucking NPR, they are as bad as anyone these days.

It has always struck me how Cheney, Rush and their ilk say the most horrible things about people, and that is supposed to be OK. But as soon as anyone says the slightest negative thing about them, they scream like a bunch of little girls.
The jig is up. You guys only speak to each other. Cheney,Anne Coutler, Michelle Malkin, Fox News all have your 25% market share, and it makes you rich (in Cheney's case, Haliburton). It is all that this is about.

Rush is a recovering addict without a program. Very destructive and totally self centered.

Cheney is simply power mad

I'm waiting for someone to finally arrest Cheney for all his treasonous words.

Ted Frier: "There could come a time when a deeply rigid and ideological party simply refuses to step aside when it is voted out of office because the price, in their view, of defeat is too high. I think we are seeing a taste of that in Cheney's behavior since the election"

I don't think you're gonna have to wait any longer. It's here....Cheney is going to stamp his feet and turn blue until he gets his way---or his mechanical heart explodes. Hope it's the latter instead of the former.

C'mon. The press was equally livid when anyone from the Bush Administration attacked Al Gore.

Right?

Tweets notifying us of your latest posts would be much appreciated.