"A Shot in the Dark" - Commentary by Tony Seton

A Shot in the Dark

Judging from the headlines, President Bush approves of or is at least "satisfied" with Vice President Cheney’s explanation of the shooting on Saturday. They and their neo-con toadies are the only ones who would have swallowed the fiction. At the other end of the fantasy meter are a whole bunch of folks who are convinced that Cheney was inebriated when he shot his friend and/or he was having his way with the U.S. Ambassador to Switzerland, who was part of the hunting party, though it’s not clear how that relates to the shooting.

Just the fact that The Bush Boy was called upon to sign off on Premier Cheney’s explanation is ridiculous on its face. It’s like a child okaying a parent’s blatant misbehavior. Cheney should have told Bush what happened when it happened on Saturday night; that is, if the two had an upright relationship. But they don’t. Cheney has been running this country from the get-go and Bush has been his dummy.

Bush is clueless beyond the briefing notes he memorizes, about virtually everything. Cheney is the wonk and the manipulator. The two have been working this act together for more than a decade, and ya gotta know that there have been only a couple of days in the past six years when Vice hasn’t craned his gaze heavenward and asked, Why me? In fact he means, Why him?, meaning Bush. Cheney would be perfectly content running the country from his second-in-command-post if only he didn’t have an idiot at the other end of his strings.

Of course, in his more generous moments, Cheney must appreciate the fact that the Democrat party self-eunuchized in 2002, when those morally-bankrupt asses, afraid of looking less strong on nationalsecurity -- that’s one word, bub, and don’t you forget it -- failed to stand up for the principles of honor and decency and truth and stuff.

Cheney must also count his lucky stars that the press has been AWOL all this time. So busy are they with the perfect coif, their eight-figure salary and their groveled access to the White House, that they readily blew off journalism like a toothless tart. Is it news or is it entertainment? Um, neither. So what if the general public is as uninformed as is their president? Um, well...

Tragically, the American public has skipped out on its citizenship obligations and is slurping capitalistically at the trough of consumption. We can hope that theirs is a temporary daze; that they have been merely lulled into intellectual somnolence by incompetent and corrupted media and corrupted and incompetent politicians.

I don’t know if The Dick had been drinking. He might have. For that matter, it might not have affected his hunting skills. How sharp would those skills have to be when you’re out shooting at pen-raised birds. That’s sorta like fishing in a hatchery pool. And I certainly haven’t any idea that Ambassador Willeford is Cheney’s Lewinsky, as some purported. It would be hard to exclude peremptorily on moral grounds, but so what and who cares? It would be difficult to shame a man who took our country to war on a tissue of lies.

I am curious, however, how the shootee could have been hit by 200 pellets in such a tight grouping at 30 yards and that they penetrated his hunting clothes and his flesh. I’m not a gun expert by any means, but that seems a powerful load.

You can’t really criticize me for wondering. I mean, he didn’t report the incident himself when it happened as would have been the right and smart thing to do. He is the Vice President of the United States of America, after all. He left it for the woman who owns the ranch to tell the local paper. Did he think the story wouldn’t get out? No one is that dumb. What is one to infer but that as bad as the story is, what really happened isn’t worse? That’s been Cheney’s M.O. for decades.

To finish off the truth, instead of having a news conference where he might have been honestly questioned, Cheney snuggled up with Brit Hume for a little light sucking. There he was with the brave face. He took full responsibility, even though everyone knew he was only saying if for effect. How could he think himself responsible when he surrounds his venal self with people like Mad Mary Matalan, who insists he did nothing wrong. Did nothing wrong? He shot someone.

Well yeah, but it’s not like he killed someone. Almost. So far. Cheney was doing fine with his shill -- no tears, not even any moist snuffling -- but then he did what he’s so often done in the past. He didn’t know when to stop. He said that the shooting made it the worst day of his life.

The worst day of your life, Mr. Vice President? Not all of us have fired a shotgun at a friend, but many have had worse days. Like those who watched the neatly-pressed uniforms walking up their front steps to tell them their son or daughter or daddy or wife had died in the carnage in Iraq. For many, maybe most, Amercians, Nine-Eleven was a worse day. And if you were thinking this was the worst day of your life, Dick, why did you first blame your friend for getting shot?

Sigh. Cheney went overboard like putting maple syrup on a Snickers where he had Bush-Lite rubber stamp his deceit. Why did Bush have to say anything? He didn’t. It just reminded people that the president doesn’t make decisions, he just announces the Vice President’s. Indeed, Bush’s imprimatur is a bloody stain of historic proportions. Cheney should have left this cur in the pound.

My bet is that Cheney will quit the second slot. Scalia will tell him, maybe on another hunting trip, that not even his hand-picked Supremes will swallow his line about having the authority to declassify the Plame Game. Before it comes to that, Cheney will get some white-coat to say his ticker is off-beat and the veep will, with sanctimonious reluctance, return to private wealth, happily ditching Bush and the rest of the ingrates who were ready to cut him loose to improve their re-election chances.

I might wish to be compassionate and say that Mr. Cheney came into their world with an awful script and faithfully did he follow it. I’d need another drink first. Perhaps in his next life he’ll come back as a young woman in Darfur. In the meantime, he can tell himself lies and hope with all his might that he never have to confront the frightful record of his life.

And that’s SetonnoteS...I’m Tony Seton.