MSM Follows Lack Of Cheney/Libby Contact

This has got to be one of the dumbest articles I have ever read. On CBS' Face the Nation today, it appears that Bob Schieffer asked Vice President Cheney if he had been in contact with Libby since his former chief of staff's conviction, and Cheney said that he had not.

"He's one of the most dedicated public servants I've ever worked with, and I think this is a great tragedy," Cheney said.

Yet Cheney has not spoken with Libby to tell him so directly.

Cheney's interviewer, Bob Schieffer, was so surprised to hear that news that he asked the vice president about it again.

So what? The MSM was going to try to make political hay out of this no matter how Cheney answered. He said no, so the MSM is wondering in print why the VP hasn't been in contact with a good friend of his who was convicted in the Plame non-scandal. I'm sure that they will cover this for a bit longer, looking for any indications that Cheney may have actually had some sort of contact with Libby so that they can harp on a six-degrees-of-separation statement of condolence that will be used to paint the VP as a liar. If the MSM finds out that an intern for a Senator who had lunch with Cheney told another intern for a Representative that Cheney told the Senator that he felt sympathy for Libby, and the second intern told his friend at the Justice Department, who told an attorney, who mentioned the same to one of Libby's attorneys, who in turn told Libby; then that will be published as, "Cheney contacted Libby through intermediaries - caught in lie to Bob Shieffer."

And what if the answer had been the opposite? If Cheney said that he had been in contact with Libby, I'm willing to bet that the MSM and the Democrats in Congress would be insisting upon an investigation to find out what those conversations had been about, and whether or not anything was said in those conversations that could construe obstruction on the part of the Vice President.

It was a no win situation for Cheney. If it were me, I would have said to Shieffer that, "I haven't contacted my long time friend because I know that any such contact, regardless of how pure the intent of such contact was, would have been spun in the press as an attempt by me to influence Libby and the trial. It is too bad that, due to the MSM, my former chief of staff needs to hear my true sentiments this way, instead of from me directly, because I don't want to bogged down in another non-scandal while other more pressing matters of state need my attention. Friends, Bob?"

This is just another non-story about a non-scandal, and yet another prime reason why I try to verify any of the drivel that I hear from the MSM.

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