Dark Lord, Secret-Keeper, and Spinners in the news

[Catbird]

*David Brooks, right-wing columnist for the New York Times and house pundit
on PBS News Hour with Jim Lehrer, offers his views today (February 16) on
news coverage of the Cheney shooting incident:*

Places, Everyone. Action!
By DAVID BROOKS,  Op-Ed Columnist

On a personal level, the Cheney-Whittington accident was a sad but
unremarkable event. Two men go hunting. Both are sloppy, and one friend
shoots another. The victim is suffering but gracious. The shooter is
anguished in his guilt.  [...]

Meanwhile we in the regular media have our own stereotypes to guide us. We
are assigned by the Fates to turn every bad thing into Watergate, to fill
the air with dark lamentations about cover-ups and appearances of
impropriety and the arrogance of power.  [...]

"The refusal of this administration to level with the American people in
matters large and small is very disturbing," Hillary Clinton declared. Nancy
Pelosi added, "Open government would demand that the vice president come
clean on what happened there."

Finally there is the Office of the Vice President, inevitably failing to
surpass expectations. The vice president's role, on this as on all days, is
to treat the press and the Washington community in general as a
plague-ridden horde, from whom it is possible, upon the merest conversation
or contact, to catch some soul-destroying disease. So, of course, *the vice
president was compelled to recreate his role as Voldemort, Keeper of the
Secrets*.

We have, when you put it all together, created a political climate
impeccably sterilized of spontaneity and normal human response. We have our
roles, dear audience. Ours is not to feel and think. Ours is but to spin or
die.


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