CBS’ Chip Reid Asks Gibbs: Is This The Official Tone Toward Cheney?

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Here’s yet another sign that Washington media is still wired to a great extent for a playing field of GOP dominance. During today’s White House press conference, CBS correspondent Chip Reid asked Robert Gibbs if it was appropriate for him to attack Dick Cheney:

Reid: Can I ask you, when you referred to the former Vice President, that was a really hard-hitting, kind of sarcastic response you had. This is a former Vice President of the United States. Is that the attitude — is that the sanctioned tone toward the former Vice President of the United States from this White House now?

Gibbs: Sometimes I ask forgiveness rather than for permission, Chip. But no, I hope my sarcasm didn’t mask the seriousness of the answer with which I addressed Ed — that for seven-plus years, the very perpetrators that the Vice President says he’s concerned about weren’t brought to justice.

Now let’s consider the full context here. Dick Cheney did an interview with CNN in which he went out of his way to repeatedly attack the new White House, saying they were putting the country at risk of a new terror attack. But the question here is whether it’s appropriate for the Obama Administration to fire back in response — that it’s Obama’s people who are accused of showing insufficient respect to the office?

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