Four Thoughts on Cheney's Shotgun Affair

1. One of the blurbs or mini-ads that Air America has been running lately features Al Franken speculating "humorously" on what might have happened had Cheney been accompanied on his ill-fated quail hunt by GW Bush and had shot him instead of the Whittington guy. Franken says that, knowing what he knows about the man, Bush would have instead shot right back at Cheney, and the two would have kept firing at each other as if they were in a Tarantino movie.

The humor and the aptness of this "joke" completely escapes me, and I think Franken is as wildly off the mark here as Cheney was on the "line" in Texas.

From where does Franken get the idea that Bush would have reacted so quickly and decisively? In all the major crises since he usurped the big desk in the White House, Bush has never acted quickly and decisively that I know of. Immediately after 9/11 and Katrina, and after this shooting, it was several days before he was heard from. Instead he just boarded planes and flew around, while he waited for his cue cards to be drawn up.

I'm not faulting Bush's slowness to react. Actually it's what I would've done. The difference is that I feel certain that in good time I would've come up with actions that made sense. But Bush took all that time just to work up to saying and doing the wrong things.

Thought # 2: This incident perfectly illustrates how dangerous and out of control Cheney is, not only to the legions that he despises but also even to his friends. His head is obviously in the same twisted condition as his body. How much better it would be for everyone if he and his medical entourage retreated to a snowed-in mountaintop cabin, seldom to be heard from again.

3. I never listen to the right-wingers on the air. To do so strikes me as akin to listening to a chorus of hippos breaking wind. But it is easy to guess that by this time more than one has said that the liberals and progressives are all hoping that Whittington doesn't make it, so as to furnish them more ammunition for firing at the Republican team currently in power.

But to say such a thing blows right back on the right wingers themselves. It's easy for them to come up with such a notion, because it's exactly the sentiment that they would have in the same situation. But the only way a progressive could conceive of such an abomination is in the process of readying themselves ahead of time for the nastinesses that the Limbaughs, the O'Reillys, and all the other stonebrains are sure to fling their way, in this as on every other past opportunity in which the dirt was on the right and not on the left hands.

And that leads me to one other thought for today:

4. The Republicans must be deeply frustrated because there's no obvious way that they can blame Whittington's being peppered with buckshot on the Democrats. There wasn't a Democrat to be found near that line, unless the quail themselves had been so registered. But as the GOPers don't let inconvenient things like facts and logic stand in their way, I'm sure that soon enough they'll come up with something. It will be interesting if sickening to see just what.