Chenygate and Kartoonistan

I just wanted to give you a heads up that Michelle Malkin has, I think, one of the better articles juxtaposing the media's frenzy about Dick Cheney's hunting accident, and its extraordinary "restraint" regarding Kartoonistan. Tony Blankley's take on the matter isn't so bad either. Indeed, while is sarcasm in the first part of the article is a bit strained, I think he has a great summary:

But the Washington press corp, and particularly the White House press corp, has developed, as an institution, a grossly dilated view of itself. Most of us can tolerate arrogance if it is accompanied by extraordinary capacity and virtuosity. The brilliant scientist, the war-winning general, the great artists are entitled to their pride. But the hallmark of the Washington Press corp these days is mediocrity, groupthink, a lack of curiosity and rampant careerism. These attributes were all on show in the shooting party incident. But this is just a trivial incident — except for the poor, shot gentleman who suffered a heart attack, may he recover fully and quickly. We live at a moment of revolutionary change in the international order. The rise and violence of radical, possibly caliphate-forming Islam and the huge, culture-changing, unexamined consequences of rampant globalization make the present one of the least predictable moments to be alive. Both government officials and citizens are in desperate need of a national press corp that is alive to the change and digging to find factual hints of the near future. We need the kind of future-oriented intellectual vigor, curiosity and genuine iconoclasm that typified American reporters in the first half of the last century. Instead, as the shooting party incident exemplified, we have in the White House at the most elite level of American journalism, self-absorbed, self-important men and women who stand on their prerogatives even over marginal and inconsequential matters.

In other words, the Press is making way too much of Cheney's problem, and way too little of real problems in the world. By saying this, I don't mean to excuse Cheney's conduct. He clearly violated a hunting rule (I teach my kids to look before pointing anything, and they're not even handling guns), and he was an idiot not to take it to the Press first. For a VP who is consistently accused of keeping secrets in a manner that is sneaky and possibly illegal, his silence here, while kind of explainable on its face, could only add fuel to the fire. But I'm trying to keep wheat and chaff separate, and Kartoonistan, Iran, Hugo Chavez, etc., are all wheaty stories, while Cheney-gate is chaff. Talking to Technorati: Cheney, Media [Please scroll down, or click here, to vote in the Conservative Slogan Contest. Your votes matter.]