Having spent hundreds of hours afield in pursuit of quail, pheasant, chuckar, ducks and geese, I sympathize with the Veep. He’s made a bad mistake that we all hope won’t prove fatal to his hunting pal. But that’s all there is to it. Or would be, but for the fragile egos of the White House press gaggle.

Were it up to them, Cheney would have been dialing Tim Russert’s home number before poor Whittington hit the ground. The arrogance of the White House knows no bounds. How dare they give the story — indirectly, at that — to a local paper and not CBS or the NYT? How could they not issue a press release? Shouldn’t the pool reporter have been in the ambulance with Ol’ Harry?

The fact that this story has ridden the front page for so long is a testament to the press’s narcissism, and nothing else. It’s not yet fair to compare their outrage to Muslims rioting over the Mohammed cartoons. Yet.