Joe Conason, Salon: Cheney family values & Liz's "crude, propagandistic pronouncements"

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Monday, Jan 11, 2010 13:12 EST
Cheney family values
Liz Cheney owes her prominence as a TV talking head to her daddy. But nepotism can be dangerous as well as annoying
By Joe Conason

http://www.salon.com/news/liz_cheney/index.html?story=/opinion/conason/2010/01/11/liz_cheney



On paper at least, Liz Cheney is more than just the privileged daughter of a former vice-president, bristling with hostile remarks about the Obama administration, the president’s patriotism, and all the terrible perils we face because her father is no longer in control of our national defenses. She advertises herself as a “specialist in Mideast policy,” a term that implies some vague expertise in counterterrorism. What she usually delivers are crude, propagandistic pronouncements like this cheesy attack ad, titled "100 Hours." Reinforced by lurid music and graphics, its chief message is that President Obama played a few rounds of golf over the Christmas holiday -- and spent a few days finding out what happened with Flight 253 before commenting publicly on the incident.

Serving as a board member of Keep America Safe, the neoconservative propaganda organ responsible for that ad, Cheney is also a Fox News commentator and a regular guest on many other outlets. In those roles she has usually escaped tough questions, but there are some signs of weariness with her vacuous bluster.

When she appeared on "ABC News This Week" to discuss the 100 Hours ad, George Stephanopoulos quickly pointed out that George W. Bush didn’t speak publicly about shoe-bomber Richard Reid until six days after he attempted to bring down Flight 253. (Stephanopoulos might also have noted that Cheney and her friends never seemed to notice how often Bush left the White House on vacation -- especially during the weeks before 9/11, when the warning system was flashing red-red-red and steam was shooting from Richard Clarke’s ears.) Then Andrew Sullivan wondered aloud why the mainstream media lavish so much attention and airtime on someone whose public prominence is rooted solely in nepotism. A very good question, even though Sullivan is about eight years too late in asking.

But whenever Liz Cheney (or her dad) complain that nobody except them takes terrorism seriously, I think about her husband, Philip Perry, and the Washington Monthly’s remarkable July 2007 investigation of how he protected the chemical industry from any federal effort to secure their manufacturing plants -- huge and enormously toxic -- from a terror attack. (Real experts have long agreed that chemical manufacturing complexes, many of them abutting metropolitan population centers, present exceptionally tempting and insecure targets for al-Qaida.)

[Skittles]

1. you got a link, Amerigo?

thanks

[Amerigo Vespucci]

2. OOOOPS...all fixed.

Thanks.

:toast:

[Skittles]

4. thanks -

a coworker was just asking me, WTF are this woman's credentials besides being a f***ing CHENEY :rofl:

[Ilsa]

3. This paragraph needs to get out to George Stephanopoulas, et al:

But whenever Liz Cheney (or her dad) complain that nobody except them takes terrorism seriously, I think about her husband, Philip Perry, and the Washington Monthly’s remarkable July 2007 investigation of how he protected the chemical industry from any federal effort to secure their manufacturing plants -- huge and enormously toxic -- from a terror attack. (Real experts have long agreed that chemical manufacturing complexes, many of them abutting metropolitan population centers, present exceptionally tempting and insecure targets for al-Qaida.)

They need to ask her about this pointedly, why her husband hates Amurica, and refuses to secure chemical plants from terror attacks.