Wednesday, February 15, 2006

The Worst Day of Dick Cheney's Life? So the worst day of Cheney's life involves shooting one of his best friends.  I still think it was worse for the other guy. Did anyone else think it was odd that right after Cheney called Harry Whittington to offer his sympathy, Whittington had a heart attack?  Is anyone else out there wondering what Whittington did to piss off old Cheney? I've heard various news folks, and press flaks like McClellan, try to change the tone of this incident by using terms like "sprayed" or "peppered" to describe what happened to Cheney's luckless hunting partner.  What happened was that Dick Cheney had a gun and pulled the trigger while another human being was in front of the barrel.  Cheney fired a shotgun shell that delivered over 200 small pieces of shrapnel (birdshot) into another man's body.  He shot another person.  Now, that poor man has suffered a heart attack because some of the shrapnel floated up into his heart.  Any question of this being a serious incident should now be over.  I can't help but be amused, and a little troubled, at all of the scrambling done by the White House Press corps.  The most egregious story I heard was that Scott McClellan heard that the Vice President was "involved in a hunting incident," but didn't get the details until later.  Now, if it was me, if I heard that Cheney was hanging out with a group of people with guns, and that there was a hunting incident, I'd want to get the rest of the story in a big damn hurry.  Meanwhile, McClellan was comfortable enough with the VP's shooting skills to make jokes about it.  During Monday's press gaggle, McClellan reportedly cracked a joke that a visiting football team was wearing orange because it was their school color, not because Cheney was in the building.   Let's all say this together.  It's okay for the late night comedians to make jokes about people being shot.  They are COMEDIANS.   It's not okay for the man who speaks on behalf of the chief executive to make jokes about people being shot.  6:58:56 PM     Speak up!  []