Why did the White House press corps flip out during the Dick Cheney hunting accident story? According to an expert quoted in today’s New York Times, it’s an illness — and George W. Bush is the cause:

Renana Brooks, a clinical psychologist practicing in Washington who said she had counseled several White House correspondents, said the last few years had given rise to ”White House reporter syndrome,” in which competitive high achievers feel restricted and controlled and become emotionally isolated from others who are not steeped in the same experience.
She said the syndrome was evident in the Cheney case, which she described as an inconsequential event that produced an outsize feeding frenzy. She said some reporters used the occasion to compensate for not having pressed harder before the Iraq war.
”It’s like any post-traumatic stress,” she said, ”like when someone dies and you think you could have saved them.”