Dick Cheney: Too Hot for TV

ice-President Dick Cheney unveiled a new "sassitude" last week, starting with Tuesday's off-color suggestion Sen. Patrick Leahy have sex with himself, and concluding with a spicier, not-ready-for-primetime Cheney fielding questions Friday from the White House press corps.

The VP surprised a number of political experts and average Americans alike by revealing a saltier disposition never before seen exhibited publicly by White House personnel. However, according to administration insiders, who crammed our doorways to volunteer information, Cheney has been quite the prick for years behind closed doors, so it was bound to come out sooner or later.

Things began innocently enough Tuesday morning, when on the Senate floor Cheney told Sen. Patrick Leahy to "fuck off," although some within hearing range claim the vice-president had been misheard, and he had actually said "fuck you." A senatorial class picture was being taken when the Democrat from Vermont fired a few barbs about Cheney's friends at the oil corporation Halliburton and allegations of abuse of power, and the vice-president responded with quite the filthy mouth, though some suggested Cheney's uncharacteristic response owed less to Leahy's comments and more to Sen. Mitch McConnell making bunny ears behind his head.

Plans had been made for Cheney to offer an explanation and possible apology for the remarks, when overnight White House polling showed drastic jumps in the VP's approval rating among males under 30, particularly African-Americans, a group Republicans have long struggled to reach. The vice-president responded via phone on CNN's Larry King Live.

"Balls to an apology, fuckface. I wouldn't piss a sorry on your freckled white ass. Leahy's a peckerhead and it's about time I laid down the law, put the smackdown him, bitch. 'Cause I'm for real." To which Larry King responded, "Is this Howard Stern screwing with me again?"

The Larry King interview caused some uproar among the FCC and some have speculated it may alienate some right-wing organizations, but Gallup polls reveal an even more distinct increase among young voters, including undecideds, so White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said Cheney would keep that shit up.

"Mr. Cheney is keepin' it real, folks," McClellan said Thursday. "If you don't like the heat, stay the fuck out the kitchen. It's the Veep's world, yo, you just visiting."

Friday, Cheney poured on more foul-mouth rancor, sporting sunglasses and wearing untied Nike sneakers. He welcomed questions from the press corps and gave reporters unwanted nicknames, including "Dicknose" and "Faghag." This particular reporter unfairly earned the moniker "Gramma Titties."

"I know you all think I'm fucking with you, but I'm for real," said Cheney, pausing to inexplicably perform "the Worm" for reporters. "It's a dangerous world, motherfuckers, and it's about time we stop pussying up the language and say fuck when we mean fuck. And don't even think about getting in my face, I don't give a shit if you're a Democrat or Republican or one of them Green Party queens—you act the bitch, I'll treat you like a bitch. Bitch."

Cheney then leapt from the stage and slapped White House reporter Helen Thomas with a harsh backhand, sending the correspondent—whom he had nicknamed "Grape Ape"—wheeling to the back wall.

he world took a long, mournful pause, or perhaps a quiet vacation, when Ronald Reagan passed away of natural (or supernatural) causes June 5, after a long bout with Alzheimer's that apparently plagued him all his life. He was ancient.

Despite the week of funeral processions, not all machinations in America stopped, as grief-stricken politicians began the work of "tidying up" the Reagan legacy as president of the United States of America, 1981-1988, and a phantom on the political scene ever since.

A week of remembrance has reminded us frequently of Reagan's strong moral values, his deep faith, his dedication to democracy, how he made it "okay" to be a "patriot," and that charming way he had of ignoring important questions. Mostly forgotten are Reagan's fundamentalist cow-towing, his close-minded prejudices, his fascistic pursuit of global democracy, the mania of conformity he embraced, and how the poor dangled on the shit stick for the entire duration of his reign. All minor changes in the book of American history rewritten in the wake of the president's death.

A proponent of America as the Enforcer, Reagan ran up a national deficit in the trillions of dollars chasing military superiority, even though our nearest rival, Russia, had no hopes of keeping up. Conservatives point to the collapse of the Soviet Union, which had begun happening long before, as proof Reagan's policy was a success, which is quite like saying taking out six mortgages on your house is worth it if your neighbor can no longer afford his house payments.

The military build-up came with a price, of course, as social programs were mauled as if by a big Libertarian bear. Welfare slashed, minimum wage ignored for years, leading to a growing body of working men and women living beneath the poverty line, and don't make anyone piss themselves laughing by asking about school funding and the arts. So important was the stealth bomber the president even slashed the runaway costs of school free lunch programs, and made ketchup a vegetable to meet national health requirements.

Blind to any problem created after communism, Reagan led a government effort to ignore the AIDS crisis until it had ravaged whole communities and helped conservatives who believed AIDS a homosexual plague carried on by promiscuity remain comfortably ignorant. A wise decision, since avoiding spending anything to save American lives allowed the purchase of the Patriot missile, which didn't work, and of course allowed him to piggy bank money for his masterpiece: Star Wars, a cheeky name for his imaginative laser defense system that would stop "just about" every nuclear missile aimed at the United States and give us real tactical superiority over Russia should a Roland Emmerich movie ever occur here. But don't worry, nostalgias—the current president hasn't given up on the fantasy.

But we shouldn't, however, forget Reagan the man. The wealth of misinformation he gave us entertained people everywhere. According to Reagan, trees were bad for the environment, homeless people preferred living on the streets, hired mercenaries fighting for right-wing causes were "freedom fighters," and important decisions betraying your own political ideological statements weren't worth remembering. Lest we forget, he also expanded presidential powers into strikebusting by firing the air traffic controllers like a $400,000 a year Pinkerton.

Even as the sorrow winds up for America, text book manufacturers are busy as we speak preparing the Reagan legacy for the next generation of leaders.

According to Shouton-Felix's Greg Ward, a history book editor: "I think we've decided to skip all the irrelevant material from 1981-1988, people only seem to remember The A-Team and New Wave music from the decade anyway. We think Reagan's presidency is best represented by a full-page headshot of the president, with the caption: 'Win one for the Gipper!'"

That guy thought he was so smart. If you're wondering who I'm talking about, pause a second to read the title of this column, up above. You with us now? Good. Now: Who wears their hair like that? Assholes, that's who. Only an asshole could pull off the "I'm so brilliant I don't have time to comb my hair or make an appointment at SuperCuts" look. Get over yourself, buddy. You wouldn't be fooling any of us if you had a crew cut. Crew cuts are like nature's shorthand for "dipshit." Smart of Einsteen to figure out the haircut ruse, I'll give him that but little else. And what's with all that relativity mumbo-jumbo? Any loudmouth off the street can make up some kind of magic formula and get praised for it, as long as he knows how to intimidate people and doesn't ever back down. Don't believe me? Fine, Q=xW34. Not so hard, is it? Now line up to kiss my ass, I'm the new genius on the block.

And let's not forget Mother Theresa and her whole ego-trip. "Oh, look at me in my cute little hat! I'm so fucking wonderful and giving! I help the poor with no thought of my own gain!" What a bitch.

And what about that Newton? Overrated. Those fig cookies suck hard. There, I've said it, somebody had to. Those things are so dry I bet if you added a drop of water they'd blow up to the size of an air mattress. Maybe that's what they're for, I don't know. I don't claim to be on the cutting edge of these matters. That does seem to be a lot of air mattresses to sell in one package, though. At the grocery store no less. Maybe if you were shopping for a whole commune in need of temporary bedding it would make sense, but there can't be that many of those people out there. Maybe there are. The thought kind of scares me, frankly.

If it turns out I've eaten over 30 air mattresses that are just waiting to inflate the next time I take a sip of water, somebody's going to be hearing from my lawyer. You can count on that. As a matter of fact, I'm leaving a note for my lawyer now in case the mass-inflation kills me, which it likely might. I don't want him to have to guess at what my last wishes would have been. Litigate, motherfucker! I don't pay you to look good in that suit. (Nice suit, by the way.)

While I'm at it, I'm going to leave a note for my chef as well. Don't want that smarmy bastard cooking my liver or anything untoward like that after I'm gone, just because I didn't leave behind a note specifically forbidding it. That guy has a hungry look in his eyes.

Who else was an asshole?

Did I mention Mother Theresa? God, she really sets me off. Sure, most of you out there in la la land probably buy into the cult of personality that says she was the greatest thing since shit on toast. And I'm sure some of those homeless orphans thought so when she was giving them backrubs and buying them big-screen TVs and what have you. But did any of you true believers out there ever play ping-pong with this piece of work? I didn't think so. Mother Theresa had a ping-pong mean streak as wide as Cecil Fielder's ass. You didn't dare ace a serve past that big-knuckled monster unless you wanted to see what one of those paddles could do to your tender butt-flesh. All those kids at the orphanage knew the unwritten rule: you let the Mother pad out her table tennis win streak if you want your porridge tonight, bucko.

Truth be told, I'm not that fond of Aristotle either, but that's a column for another day.

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