The Cheney Game

And while Liz Cheney has taken a serious hit for her "Al Qaeda Seven" attack on the Justice Department where even conservatives are calling out her McCarthyism, Spencer Ackermann reminds us that the real problem is the Village keeps bringing the Cheney Lie Machine on TV in spite of this.

What keeps the Cheney dynasty propelling forward is its relationship with the media. For all the contempt expressed by Dick Cheney over the years at the press, his post-vice presidential career has demonstrated that he knows very well how to manipulate it. He gives interviews to those who have no interest in challenging him like Politico and the Sunday shows, where theatrics can overcome even the occasional alert or tenacious questioner. Those news-venues won’t “take greater pause before trotting out the former vice president,” because what they’re doing is working for them.


So you’d have to change the game up. You’d have to make Fred Hiatt have to constantly answer for hiring Marc Thiessen and you’d have to put the Washington bureaus of the TV networks in a position where their self-regard as professionals is, publicly, at issue. And you’d have to do it in a way that avoids those malefactors preening that their uncritical embrace of intellectual dishonesty is a sign of integrity — after all, aren’t they brave to give a voice to the other side in the debate that the braying left wants to shut down, etc. The Cheneys only matter as much as the media allow them to matter. 

And given the fact that Karl Rove, John McCain, and now Newt Gingrich and Tom Delay are still allowed to peddle their version of the facts, I don't expect that the Cheneys will find themselves black listed anytime soon.

Why would anyone expect anything different?