Dick Cheney: scary vice-president?
Photograph: J Scott Applewhite/APAccidents happen. Dick Cheney's shooting of his quail hunting companion with a shotgun was, however, one of those mishaps that reaches out of television or radio news and grabs you with its sheer surprisingness. Perhaps because no one expects politicians to have non-political accidents - a little like when George Bush fainted eating a pretzel while watching NFL. Or fell off his bike. Or crashed his bike into a policeman at Gleneagles. It makes you wonder whether the current US administration is the most sports accident-prone in history.
A man, 78-year-old lawyer Harry Whittington, has been hurt ("peppered pretty good" in the words of ranch owner Katherine Armstrong) but there are jokes ... and the likelihood of more to come. One contributor to Eschaton exclaims: "Dick shot a lawyer! Is he nuts?"
Then there is the factor of the vice president's reputation in all this, a man author Dave Eggers described in one of his Short Short Stories as exhibiting "that kind of evil that's so ridiculous that you almost like the evil-doer, because they're so willing to go out and camp it up". Captain's Quarters, a Republican supporting blog, accuses the Associated Press of putting out an intentionally "scary" picture to accompany its news report. The picture, which we've reproduced above, shows a half-lit Mr Cheney snarling.
The Democrat supporting blogs are, perhaps more unexpectedly, though not altogether atypically, finding scandal in the shooting. An Editor and Publisher report revealing that news of the accident only emerged when Ms Armstrong tipped off a local reporter is linked to by Daily Kos, which argues that "incompetence and a healthy effort to cover up that incompetence" is just what he would expect from the Bush administration.
Talking Points Memo asks hunting readers if Ms Armstrong's explanation that Mr Whittington "came up from behind" and failed to signal his position (so it was his fault) actually makes sense. He says it cannot: "one point that comes through really clearly from everyone is that when you're hunting and you hit a person - that's your fault. Period. End of story."
So, one Republican blogger finds media bias, others ignore the accident as trivial. Meanwhile, their Democratic counterparts take the opportunity to extend the Watergate principle of it not being the crime but the cover up to the world of quail hunting. That is all it takes to push the initially rather surprising news of the shooting onto much more familiar territory for US blogs.
