Judge Orders Cheney Interviews Released, Cable News Producers Salivate

For one thing: color. Turns of phrase, hesitations, a few swear words à la Cheney’s Patrick Leahy confrontation; these things are red meat for the cable cycle. One or two choice lines among hundreds of pages of documents could keep a dozen roundtables busy for hours. Remember “wise Latina?” Leave the obscure provisions for the blogosphere; stacks of Cheney investigation documents are begging to be boiled down to five bullet points, tops.

Cable cynicism aside, a shift of focus from health care to the deeds and misdeeds of Dick Cheney could be a boon for CNN and MSNBC, groping in the dark since Obama’s election. By bringing the national consciousness back to the bad old days of the Bush administration — and this could be a great excuse to remind everyone just how bad those old days were, and then some — the troubled networks could dig up clips of some of their best reportage and remind America why it used to need them.

Fox presumably would miss out in all of this, but it could play the media critic and pounce on all of the “important” stories other networks are missing out on, and lead the charge to defend Cheney’s reputation.

This isn’t a done deal yet — Sullivan’s decision can potentially be overturned by a court of appeals, and the DoJ is likely to fight on, given its fears of a chilling effect this decision could have over future investigations.

But if it stands, you know what you’re in for. In the you-can’t-make-this-up department, The Washington Post records that “At one point, the Justice Department argued that future officials might not want to talk to investigators if they knew that such interviews might ‘get on ‘The Daily Show” or be used as a political weapon.” Truth is, Jon Stewart is probably as fair a hatchetman as they could hope for.