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Page 2 of 2 Vice President Dick Cheney, May 30, 2005 CNN interview with Larry King
Now there is someone who really knows how to lay it on smooth and thick. He didn’t even have to use confusing words like “dissemble.” Is it any wonder why no terrorist in his right mind would even think of assassinating figurehead Bush? Cheney is where the real power resides. He is the black core of the growing corporate cancer and the author of the biggest lies. I’m sure the security around Cheney is heavier than around Bush himself.
I have a theory as to at least one reason why no one questions Bush. They are just so amazed to see him make it through the thicket of complex malapropisms, botched syntax and mispronounced words, that they wouldn’t know where to even begin to compose a request for a correction or a follow up. Another equally good guess is, they like keeping their jobs and their cushy White House press perks.
With Cheney it’s a different matter. In his case, I suspect there may be a more insidious reason for the timidity of interviewers. You notice that, with the Vice President, the closer he gets to the content of questionable veracity, the more he fixes his beady, malefic eyes directly on the interviewer and snarls. I also suspect that, at the moment Cheney is pronouncing the biggest whoppers, the members of his Praetorian SS guard begin to loom menacingly over the interviewer as well. What reporter is brave enough to pose a well-researched, factual refutation of the Vice President and then find himself suddenly on assignment outside the Green Zone in Baghdad or whisked off to some gulag in Egypt? It is more likely that Dan Rather would have attacked Saddam Hussein with a penknife during his last interview before the war than one of these faint-hearted interviewers were to ask a critical question of the VP.
No need to use such tactics on a softballer like the loveable Larry. As I said before, he could even make Hitler look like a misunderstood, nice kinda fella.
The microcosm of this week’s events would be my submission for a time capsule of our age. One further item I would include would be the recap of the Deep Throat affair inspired by the de-closeting of FBI Agent, Felt. Woodward and Bernstein inspired a generation of hungry journalists eager to soil their hands uncovering the evil and the unjust in the mud of politics. They contributed in no small way to what once passed for a democratic society. Sadly, those days are long gone. As Jason Leopold asserted, “Not even Woodward has the muckraking qualities of what Woodward used to have.” (4).
This development bodes ill, not only for the fate of democratic politics, but also for every aspect of our society - its health, its safety and its security on all levels. It has been said that freedom of the press is the bedrock upon which all of our other freedoms rest, because it cannot exist unless the other nine rights, as well as the additional guaranteed rights in the First Amendment, are in place. The expiration of a free press is the canary in the coalmine. It inaugurates what pilots call “a time of useful consciousness” (5) that allows us to either quickly restore a healthy environment or die. What we are witnessing is the passing away of the fourth estate (6). If we do nothing to reinstate a free press in America, all our other freedoms will soon perish as well.
Peace,
Bob Boldt
(1) DISASSEMBLE dis·as·sem·ble (dĭs'ə-sĕm'bəl)
v., -bled, -bling, -bles.
v.tr. To take apart: “The detainee’s defenses began to rapidly disassemble when the Koran hit the crapper.”
v.intr. To come apart, to break up in random fashion.
DISSEMBLE dis·sem·ble (dĭ-sĕm'bəl
v., -bled, -bling, -bles.
v.tr.To disguise or conceal behind a false appearance. To make a false show of; feign.
v.intr.
To disguise or conceal one's real nature, motives, or feelings behind a false appearance. “President Bush would dissemble his lust for Iraqi oil behind the false hysteria over weapons of mass destruction and the desire for revenge for 9/11."
(2) 'Dean Scream' Clip Was Media Fraud
By Edward Wasserman
The Miami Herald February 23, 2005
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/printer_022505F.shtml
(3) It is amazing/amusing to read the transcript of the second Carter/Ford Presidential Debate. In the follow up to the president’s assertion that the Soviet Block was not under Soviet domination, Max Frankel, associate editor of the New York Times, even tried to allow President Ford to gracefully extricate his foot from his mouth, which he insisted on shoving it in even deeper in his response. Later his dutiful, yes-men advisors complimented him on how well he did in the debate. The following day’s papers carried the truth. In the end it cost him the election.
http://www.debates.org/pages/trans76b.html
(4) Watergate Proves That Even Presidents Will Break Laws To Achieve Goals - by Jason Leopold
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0601-29.htm
(5) “Basic tasks quickly illustrate when a pilot is losing it. ‘The time of useful consciousness’ or effective performance time is defined as "the time from loss of sufficient oxygen until the subject is no longer able to perform the task in a safe or efficient manner." – a task such as taking steps to save himself and his plane.
http://www.aopa.org/asf/asfarticles/2001/sp0110.html
(6) Edmund Burke said that “…there were three Estates in Parliament, but in the Reporters Gallery yonder, there sat a fourth Estate more important far than they all."
Bob Boldt is MWCNews.net Political Cartoonist, he can be reached at b-boldt@mwcnews.net" target="_blank">b-boldt@mwcnews.net
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