I’m putting my shotgun in the closet. I’d hate like hell to be Cheneyed.
Think about it. It might not be too long before you hear people saying this:
“Hey, watch it with that gun asshole. What are you trying to do, Cheney me?”
Being “Cheneyed” or “Don’t Cheney me” may be part of the language someday. It’s unfortunate enough that the vice (no comment) president shot his 78-year-old friend while hunting quail on a South Texas ranch. Now I hear the victim, Austin attorney Harry Whittington, suffered a heart attack from some of the birdshot that lodged in his heart. Damn. I guess being perceived as a modern-day Darth Vader when it comes to starting wars and endangering civil liberties isn’t enough for Dick Cheney. He must, honest-to-God, want to be another Aaron Burr. I wonder if a treason trial is in his future like Burr’s? It could happen, given the suspicions about his alleged role in the CIA leak case. It could happen when pigs fly in a frozen hell.
I was working this afternoon and didn’t have a chance to check out the latest news on the ‘net until I watched the network news on TV just a few minutes ago. That’s when I heard about Whittington having a heart attack because the vice president shot him. Damn, I leave the world an hour or so and the whole damn operation falls apart! This is pretty danged surreal.
A while ago I read the transcript of today’s White House press briefing in which our favorite flak Scotty McClellan got his ass handed to him by the White House press corps. Quite a lot of righteous indignation was in that room today, I’d say. But then that is what the White House press corps is best at — righteous indignation.
The proverbial WH press corps’ nose was out of joint over it taking almost 24 hours before anyone in the media knew Vice President Dick Cheney had shot someone. Even though the man Cheney shot while hunting birds in South Texas is okay, it’s still news. We’ve not had a U.S. vice president shoot anyone since 1804 when Vice President Aaron Burr gunned down Alexander Hamilton in a duel. Funny, we don’t see Burr’s likeness on any of our paper money and we’re likely not to see Cheney’s. Nevertheless, the press could see no good reason to delay the news of the Cheney faux pas by almost a day. And, I’m inclined to agree.
Perhaps a lot of the press indignation was over the principle of the matter. It is yet one more in a long list of attempts to control the flow of information by a control-freak White House. But I have to think too that maybe there is just a wee bit of jealousy as well from the RIWHPC (Righteously-indignant White House press corps). After all, it was reporter Jaime Powell of the Corpus Christi Caller-Times who got the call from Anne Armstrong that Cheney had shot Harry Whittington with birdshot. It was on Armstrong’s ranch where the shooting took place and she was also a witness to the shooting. Powell had built up a good reporter-source relationship with the Armstrong family, longtime, rich South Texas ranchers, and those connections paid off in one hell of a scoop for a medium-sized daily like the Caller-Times.
As someone who has worked as a reporter for papers of that size and smaller, and who had to occasionally brush elbows with the RIWHPC in Crawford, I can only say: “Way to go Jaime.”
Oh my. It is just almost too easy what Vice President Dick Cheney handed those of us who like to skewer the powerful, political and the politically powerful.
If you were in a coma yesterday or today, you might not know that Cheney accidentally shot a 78-year-old Austin lawyer friend on a ranch in South Texas while they were hunting quail. This is, of course, not funny. The lawyer reportedly spent some time in ICU in a Corpus Christi hospital after being pelleted by birdshot from the shotgun fired by the man who is just a heartbeat away from the presidency.
But even if you have no sense of humor, or whimsy, or irony whatsoever you just have to say: “Whoa. Dude!”
First, consider that both Democrats and some Republicans have begun asking questions about the vice president’s role in the CIA leak scandal. This comes in light of revelations that Cheney’s indicted, former chief of staff Scooter “Dooter” Libby has indicated he was told by superiors to leak information to reporters to bolster the case for the Iraq war. Some politicians are now saying the special prosecutor in the case needs to question Cheney (Libby’s superior). Of course, I think the VP being questioned is not likely, especially in light of these events in Texas. I mean, he’s already shot one lawyer …
Also, there is this six degrees of separation element at work here. The lawyer Cheney shot, Harry Whittington, was an ally of President Bush when the latter man was governor. President George W. Bush picked Dick Cheney to be his vice president. President George Herbert Walker Bush chose Dan Quayle as his vice president. Both George W. and George Herbert Walker Bush are Texas residents. Cheney shot the president’s lawyer friend in Texas. Both Cheney and his friend were hunting quail, which is a homophone of the name of the elder Bush’s vice president.
Coincidence? I think not.
“I don’t know officer. It was all a blur to me.”
Sometimes I have a quest for the unknown. Maybe it borders a little on the obsessive. On second thought, it is obsessive. But sometimes you just have to know something. It’s like, you can’t let it go until you know it. You feel like your life is incomplete to not know it. You are only half an intellectual being until you know it. Starving children in Africa can’t eat until you know it. Brangelina can’t do … whatever the hell it is that they do … until you know it. So, I guess you maybe get the picture that I have got to know it. Yes, I’ve got to find out … today’s burning question:
Who put the bomp
In the bomp bah bomp bah bomp?
I won’t rest. I wont’ eat. I won’t sleep. None of this shall I do until I determine:
Who put the ram
In the rama lama ding dong?
You might as well not count on me to do much else unless I can find:
Who put the bop
In the bop shoo bop shoo bop?
And along those same lines:
Who put the dip
In the dip da dip da dip?
Yes. I guess I’m in for a long wait until someone tells me or I discover through painstaking research just:
Who was that man?
For you see, I’d like to shake his hand. And then I would like to slap him upside the head for making an obsessive cripple out of me. Slap him up one side and down the other. Who put the bop in the bop shoo bop shoo bop? I don’t know. Not yet. But when I do find out, you’ll be the first to know.
