AP Asks Cheney’s Doctors If They Stopped Beating Their Wives Yet

Like Jerry Seinfeld, the Associated Press did a masterful job of making a story out of nothing this weekend after news broke that former Vice President Dick Cheney was the recipient of a heart transplant.

In fact, APs first paragraph is one of those masterful bits of psychological manipulation along the lines of the old rhetorical trick that goes: “when did you stop beating your wife?”

With its first paragraph the AP cast doubt on the propriety of Cheney getting a heart transplant, raised the specter of Cheney getting “special treatment” (even while denying he did) and played the age card to boot pointing out that many “thousands of younger people” are still waiting while Cheney is now walking around with a new heart.

The nerve of that guy.

Of course, the whole paragraph is geared to cause doubt about the propriety of Cheney getting his transplant even while hiding under plausible deniability that this was its purpose.

Here is that first paragraph:

Doctors say it is unlikely that former Vice President Dick Cheney got special treatment when he was given a new heart at age 71 that thousands of younger people also were in line to receive.

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