My first thought when I heard on Saturday that Cheney had shot someone by accident on a hunting trip was, "Jay Leno just got very excited." These incidents are a dream for comedy writers and last night, they teed off on it. The best lines, predictably, came from Jon Stewart on the Daily Show:
"Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot a man during a quail hunt ... making 78-year-old Harry Whittington the first person shot by a sitting veep since Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton, of course, (was) shot in a duel with Aaron Burr over issues of honor, integrity and political maneuvering. Whittington? Mistaken for a bird."
and
"Now, this story certainly has its humorous aspects...But it also raises a serious issue, one which I feel very strongly about...moms, dads, if you're watching right now, I can't emphasize this enough: Do not let your kids go on hunting trips with the vice president. I don't care what kind of lucrative contracts they're trying to land, or energy regulations they're trying to get lifted - it's just not worth it."
Great stuff.
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Yahoo has a compilation of jokes from the chat shows.
Joe - your link does not work.
try this : http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060214/ap_en_tv/tv_cheney_jokes
i don't know why it failed, 'cause it worked in the "preview" state.
I also like the head on an article I saw early this morning.
"See Dick. Run!!"
(I'd give credit if I could either remember where it was or could find it again ...)
I also appreciated the "special reports" by Ed Helms and Rob Corddry, in which they brilliantly dissected the incident in very different and hysterically funny ways. It will be interesting to see how the two 'parties' settle the legal issues as quietly as they can. Molly Ivans has a great piece today on Whittington's personal contributions to Texas.
I had the same thought myself Ed. I blogged the day it happened:
I was going to say the same thing as Spyder (incidently, every time I see your user name I can't help but think of "Goodfellas"). But yeah, Ed Helmes analyzing the situation was pure gold. And the endless mockery of the fact that the so-called "hunting trip" as actually more of a "going to a ranch and shooting wingless, tame birds that just stand there" trip.
I hope they at least had the common descencey to yell "IT'S COMING RIGHT AT US!" first.
My favorite moment from last night's show was Rob Corddry describing the shooting as if he were discussing the whole WMD/Iraq fiasco. Best comment (and I'm paraphrasing) was when he said that Cheney, if he knew at the time that there was no quail there and that he had been misled into thinking there was, would still have turned and shot his friend.
Howard Stern made a comment this morning along the lines of "It turns out it was a GOOD thing Cheney got all those Viet Name deferrals or God knows how many more men we might've lost."
Now the bad news:
Hunter Shot by Cheney Has Heart Attack
AP - 43 minutes ago
CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas - The 78-year-old lawyer who was shot by Vice President Dick Cheney in a hunting accident has some birdshot lodged in his heart and he had a "minor heart attack," a hospital official said Tuesday. Peter Banko, the hospital administrator at Christus Spohn Hospital Corpus Christi-Memorial, said Harry Whittington had the heart attack early Tuesday while being evaluated.
"...birdshot lodged in his heart" sure doesn't sound like he got "peppered by a pellet gun". It sounds like he got "shot by a shotgun". You don't get metal lodged in your heart from a light dusting.
I try, I really do, but you can't believe a damn thing these guys say.
Birdshot could have gotten to the heart from outside, or from the jugular vein in the neck. Which is it? The former seems unlikely - he would have been dead on the scene, not suffering a heart attack two days after.
It looks like from the reports that it "worked its way" to the heart from another location, which isn't as bad as it just blasting straight through I suppose. Not that it makes the heart feel much better. I'd doubt it came from the jugular, but most any other location in the chest area would probably suffice. I can see how it would lodge elsewhere, then get worked deeper until it got into general blood flow and got to the heart.
But I am not a doctor, so that's strictly speechifying from the rectum there.
Has the media called it 'Cheney-gate' yet?
Deadeye-dick wasn't trying to kill the quail, only to maim them in the left wing.
Small calibre projectiles tend to bounce around in the human body. I prosecuted a case over a year ago in which the shooter fired at his victim from an elevated position with a pellet gun (an air rifle). The pellet entered the soft spot just above the sternum, bounced off a bone (probably a rib) once inside, and then punctured the victim's lung.
You don't normally think of a pellet gun as being that dangerous of a weapon, but the guy in my case would have died if he didn't receive medical attention as soon as he did.
Just watched Stewart's show. Before he landed the Hamilton joke he looked up and said "thank you jesus" referring to how this is obviously a comedian's dream.
Here's an exciting new toy for ol' Deadeye Dick! Less media embarrassment next time, he can hope.
Scott said:
I don't know if they were first, but that is the tag on 'The Smoking Gun' treatment of Deadeye Dick.
Every news story talks about how reporters have "peppered" Scott McClellan with questions. I thought it was only mildly funny, until I heard that one of those questions became lodged in his lower intestine. Hasn't stopped him from hosting press conferences...