Dick Cheney + Beers + Ammunition = Tinfoil Hat Party

This is interesting. If I was big on conspiracy theories, I’d be putting on the tinfoil hat, e-mailing all my conspiracy theory buddies, and posting it on my blog. Since I don’t have any buddies, I’ll have to settle for two out of three.

MSNBC ran a story about Dick Cheney shooting Harry Whittington, but this story concentrated on the ranch’s owner, Katharine Armstrong. At one point, the story had the following quote from her:

“There may be a beer or two in there,” she said, “but remember not everyone in the party was shooting.”

However, that quote is no longer in the article. If you search Google News for that phrase, the article still shows up in the search results, since the phrase was in there when Google first crawled it.

If your conspiracy radar doesn’t go all pingy over that, then you might want to have it serviced. Or not. I mean, surely the White House wouldn’t try to cover up a story in which the Vice President accidentally shot someone after having some beers.
Now, do I really think that’s what happened? Probably not. I doubt MSNBC could be convinced to cover up a juicy story like that. But it’s certainly interesting, and it’s certainly something that I’m willing to drag out into the light and poke with a stick. See? Poking.

After all, I feel that it’s my duty to uphold the stereotype of bloggers as shoddy pseudo-journalists, spreading rumors, half-truths, and outright lies without anyone to keep people in line. Hey, it’s the least I can do. At least I’m not claiming to have proof that Dick Cheney is an alien from Gorlgamak trying to take over the planet. (Although you might want to check back later in the week when I investigate his alien-like smell.)

UPDATE (about 18 hours later): Well, the paragraph is back in the MSNBC article in a modified form. I guess they didn’t have much choice, given all of the noise on all the blogs about the scrubbed paragraph. With everyone whipping up conspiracy theories about it, they couldn’t really just sit there and pretend it never existed.

The new details from the article now have Cheney admitting that he had “a beer.” Sounds like giving in a little in the face of actual evidence. Anyone want to bet that it was more than one? Here’s the current bit from MSNBC, we’ll see how long it stays like this:

NBC News called the vice president’s office for comment four times Tuesday and Wednesday and asked whether the vice president or anyone in the hunting party had consumed any alcohol on Saturday prior to the accident. In an e-mail statement Wednesday to NBC News, the vice president’s press secretary referred NBC News to the Kenedy County Sheriff’s Department report on the incident. Later in the day on Fox News, Brit Hume stated that Cheney told him during a taped interview that he had had “a beer at lunch” before the hunting incident.