Ah, Slanderous!

Ever notice how the right wing always employs slander -- both defensively, to get themselves off the hook by blaming the victim, and offensively to smear their opponents by calling their veracity into question?

In Dowd's editorial in yesterday's Times, she describes the 4 step Bush-Cheney cycle (see my post from yesterday). Step 4 is: Blame the victim without leaving fingerprints by outsourcing the smear to the private sector.

In the case of When Cheney Shot Harry, Cheney outsourced the smear of Whittington to Mary Matalin, who told the media that Whittington had, in a way, been asking to get shot because he didn't inform his hunting partners about his location.

Cheney supposedly "accepted the responsibility" in his interview with Brit Hume last night when he said, "You can talk about all of the other conditions that exist at the time, but that's the bottom line and - it was not Harry's fault." But as the Bush PR Theater Company knows, first impressions have the most impact and are what is remembered, follow-up explanations are not as impactful, and less well remembered.

In the world of the Bush gang, top gang members experience no consequences for their actions. Everyone else, however, is wholly reponsible for their fates.

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