Go Shoot Dick

Apparently, Newsweek magazine assigned a photographer to get shots of Dick Cheney, and then took one of the photos and severely cropped it. They then used the photo to illustrate a story about Cheney and the CIA and their heavy-handed interrogation methods.

Here's the original photograph:

(Yes, dear reader! Scream with horror as you gaze upon Dick and some Cheneys at home chowing down!) (Is that a human heart Cheney is shaving?) And here is the cropped Newsweek version, below:

The photographer has cried foul, saying that in cropping the photo, Newsweek is being unfair to Cheney, using an image that suggests he is some sort of butcher? Animal? Even in the cropped shot, Cheney still looks like one of the quaint, kindly and avuncular old gents who taught me at Sunday School.

Am I alone in thinking sarcastically that poor Cheney really needs defending, oh, poor, feeble Cheney needs this photographer to leap to defend him from... what? The charge that he was a total bastard who carved out an unconstitutional fiefdom within the U.S. Government from where he exercised illegal power and influence that resulted in random people being tortured; random people, the torturing of whom, even if they were terrorists, at best extracted no useful information?

And let's not overlook that the Newsweek editors, upon buying the image, could do whatever they want with it.