It's a gift! A cowboy gift!

Interesting trend that MediaMatters touches on: Cheney did not, in fact, shoot his good buddy Whittington. Whittington got 'peppered'. He stepped into the line of fire. He was hit in the face. He found himself on the wrong end of Cheney's rifle, he caught a load of Cheney's birdshot*. My favorite is that "the birdshot came from a gun fired by the vice president...", courtesy of Nightly News on NBC.

Why all the wordplay? If it were just anyone, it would be: A man was accidentally shot by a fellow hunter. The victim wouldn't have been 'peppered', wouldn't have found himself on the wrong end of the gun, or anything. Generally in hunting accidents the blame falls to the shooter, and even the NRA has said that the final responsibility in this case lies on Cheney. Vice President Dick Cheney shot a man. By accident, yes, and it's very unfortunate, but let's stop trying to make it sound better than it really is.

*Regrettably, the immature part of my mind has informed me that there are a few unspeakably crude jokes that could be made using these phrasings and references to Brokeback Mountain. For the sake of all that is good in the world, my sanity, and cute fuzzy puppies, I'm trying very hard to pretend I never had that thought.