Mary Matalin Met The Press And Let Them Have It!
Today, I saw one of the most interesting segments on Meet The Press. I was anticipating a slaughter..Tim Russert,Maureen Dowd, David Gregory, versus Mary Matalin and Paul Gigot. Topic..Dick Cheney. Let me tell you Mary came out swinging, knocked Russert senseless, had Gregory stammering and apologising for his behavior, and when it came to Maureen…she politely called her the bitch she is with the mouth to match! I believe the crew was seen wiping the stage with Maureen’s lip!
Highlights:
MS. MATALIN: Let me pose a question here. What if I called David, instead of Katherine calling the Corpus Christi Caller-Times and said, “I’m just going to talk to you.” I suppose David’s first reaction, or any of his colleagues would be, “No, let’s go through the process. Let’s call the pool. Let’s get everybody involved here.” No, I know that’s not true because I’ve done this with Cheney feeding frenzies before when he’s had to go in for routine heart checks. There’s no such thing as you just put out a statement. And if I ever did want to just give it to one guy”on occasion which I did so I had the time to walk through it”they would take it. They didn’t say, “Stop! Let’s go through the process and get the whole pool there.” So it’s disingenuous. I’m not starting a false debate. We’re not undermining the hallmarks of the democratic institution, the freedom of the presss. But its much ado about nothing, or in the words of Harry Whittington, “What’s all the hoopla about?”
MR. GREGORY: OK, but Mary, if that’s the case, first of all, you know, the vice president of the United States accidentally shot a man for the first time since Aaron Burr killed Alexander Hamilton. Much different circumstance, admittedly. And the vice president’s office doesn’t feel an obligation to disclose that to the American people directly. You do it through a ranch owner in Texas? It just”it just strikes me as odd.
MS. MATALIN: It strikes you as odd because you live in a parallel universe. It did not strike Americans as odd. Press were calling me saying, “The president”the vice president needs to apologize.” He did profusely and repeatedly to the victim of his accident, who was Harry Whittington.
MR. GREGORY: If you thought he did everything right, why is it that you ultimately”if the vice president said, “I did everything right,” by disclosing it the way he did, why did you do a big national interview this week?
MS. MATALIN: Because you went on a jihad, David. For four days you went on a Jihad.
MR. GREGORY: And that’s an unfortunate use of that word, by the way. This is not what that was.
MS. MATALIN: Oh, OK. All right. How”were you saving up for that line?
MS. DOWD: Mary, it isn’t only the press. He blows off the FISA courts, he blows off the Geneva Conventions, he blows off the U.N. to go to Iraq. He wants to blow off everything. He’s got a fever of about presidential erosion just the way he had a fever about going into Iraq.
MR. GIGOT: A hunting incident”the vice president can defend himself, but a hunting incident is a little different than the FISA court issue and the NSA.
MS. DOWD: But it’s part of same pattern.
MR. GIGOT: It is not”it’s”how about a little human empathy? I mean, he shot his friend. He’s”it’s really one of these incidents where I think we can all stand back and say, “Let’s have a debate about the FISA Courts. Let’s have a big debate about the NSA wiretaps. Those are important issues.” This is a very different kind of circumstance.
MS. DOWD: But then he shot his friend and blames his friend.
Okay, now did she just say that to stoke the fire that was just about to burn her?
MS. MATALIN: Putting aside the delicious hypocrisy there(Link referencing 30 hour delay in her telling POTUS about Vince Foster’s suicide note), what a missed opportunity. What if Mrs. Clinton had come out and said, “Do you know, I’m not a hunter, but lived in Arkansas and I understand this is an accident. These sorts of accidents are not infrequent. I don’t agree with Dick Cheney on many things, as you know, but I do know Lynn and Dick Cheney and I have to believe like any human being that he must be feeling awful right now for shooting his friend. And most of all, I don’t know Harry Whittington, but there’s a man lying in a hospital bed and I think we should all pass our thoughts and prayers along to him. Now, I’d like to talk about the serious business of this nation, things that I do not agree with the vice president on.” Well, Maureen Dowd, the diva of the smart set would be swooning. Moms across the country would be saying, “Hey, she thinks like me. That’s right. A guy shoots his friend. That’s not relative to my life. Let’s move on to serious issues.” No, that was a politically stupid thing to do, beside the delicious and just absurd hypocrisy of the forthcomingness of an administration.
MS. DOWD: But I think reporters would have had a lot of empathy for the vice president if he hadn’t sent people out for four days to blame the victim. I mean, you know, I went hunting with Reagan and Bush Sr. and I’ve been on all these Republican hunting trips, and”but I’ve learned a lot about hunting this week. And the thing I’ve learned is that the shooter bears total responsibility for where everyone in the party is before he shoots, and they shoot abreast, not while someone’s fetching a duck. So for him to send all these people out to blame this guy for so many days was not appropriate.
MR. GREGORY: I just wonder what Mary Matalin and others would have said if Vice President Gore had accidentally shot someone with similar facts and the press corps was pressing hard for answers and if Mary or others wouldn’t think we would press just as hard for answers in that circumstance with this kind of story, I think that’s mistaken.
MS. MATALIN: I don’t know what answers you pressed for that weren’t contained in this story. And you want to know why there’s bad faith because this human accident, this tragedy is conveyed as “Vice president”"she just characterized it”"The vice president sent people out for four days to blame the victim.” No such thing occurred. In the first story it was clear from his spokesman and Katharine Armstrong that he took responsibility and he was apologetic. He did not send anybody out to take the blame. I’ve explained how these stories go from putting out facts to issuing denials. He wasn’t out”he wasn’t out”and he wasn’t not out for four days. If you go through those four days, the first day the story was out there in as complete a fashion as we could humanly do.
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February 19, 2006 - 11:12 PM on February 19th, 2006
Maureen Dowd should seek psychiatric help. She wrote a column about the Cheney shooting case that was an example of extreme lunacy. It should be used a textbook case of how mental illness can cloud even the simplest of facts in the mind of the lunatic.
It is useless to even take her ramblings and one by one refute them. They are so far off the scale of anything resembling reason and logic that the entire compilation can simply be de facto dismissed and relegated to the round file.
I am so glad Dowd is on the opposite side. I’ll take Ann Coulter and Mary Matalin and day over Dowd and those like her.
February 19, 2006 - 11:41 PM on February 19th, 2006
[...] hunting accident. [Hat Tip: Right Voices] Posted on Feb 19th, 2006 @ 23:13 in Quote Of The Day | Print No Comments» [...]
February 20, 2006 - 08:44 AM on February 20th, 2006
Robert, I wish you could have seen her. That pouty look when Mary got done with her was priceless!
February 20, 2006 - 10:23 AM on February 20th, 2006
BEAT THE LIBERAL PRESS a new idea for a program by conservatives in which conservatives can show the liberal left-wing news media just what we think of them:razz:
February 20, 2006 - 11:09 AM on February 20th, 2006
I wish Mary had taken another couple of eggs from Carville’s egg carton and smashed it on Dowd and Gregory’s faces. Although, she did so verbally.
February 20, 2006 - 02:47 PM on February 20th, 2006
I would liked to have seen Maureen Dowd’s throughly-whipped countenance. I don’t watch very much TV these days, and long ago gave up watching Meet the Press since it is usually a bunch of self-proclaimed Gurus pontificating positions that are so transparently biased there is no useful information content.
But this would have been worth it.
February 21, 2006 - 09:59 AM on February 21st, 2006
Big Bad Wolf Blitzer needs a egg right in his face:razz: