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!'"

It's no surprise there's few major news stories this week, given the death of Ronald Reagan is still permeating the national consciousness. Sure, there's some minor events that warrant attention—the death of a major Iraqi puppet leader and the complete personality change in the next-in-line to the White House, but it's how we start to move on from our grief. Slowly and with small tidbits of newsworthy items.

My respect for Reagan knew no bounds, unlike those restraining orders his administration filed against yours truly. Sure, we were adversaries—I disrespected his policies and found him insincere about his vision of a better America. A diplomatic cowboy, a fascist of the religious right, and merciless eradicator of the working classes and impoverished. Sure, given a gun, a single bullet, and a fair shot, I might have offed him myself—but I respected the man, and that's what counts.

It's no secret I'm a liberal, good sir, and I like to wear ladies' undergarments. At least it's not since I wrote that. But just because we differed politically, and my spite for the man was limitless, doesn't mean I can't recognize he was a premiere statesman and a beloved icon of America. Even if I hated him with every fiber of my being, even if he exemplified everything immoral and base and uncivilized about America, and laid the groundwork for the quagmire of foreign policy we currently practice that has turned us into the world's public enemy number one, doesn't mean I can't offer some small praise for the things he did right, should I ever discover any. When he passed on, I didn't dance—not very long at all, sir. A week, tops.

I bring this all up because the commune received some very unkind letters from readers this week about our previous edition's coverage of the Reagan story, and by that I mean him being dead and all. Now, I didn't read the mail, I have people for that. Lefty read some of it and gisted it for me, and she said some people liked it and some people didn't. Some people felt we were unfair to the ex-president and some people thought we were giving him too much news coverage. Some thought we were hot, some thought we were cold, but no porridge was just right. People, can you do me a favor and just get one opinion before you all go writing all that drivel to me? It's hard to keep track of more than one opinion, besides my own.

My point is: Quit your bitching. We had to cover the Reagan news in-depth, it was a huge story. In fact, it still is—what else is going on? Sure, the murder of a major Iraqi official, the Vice-President's filthy mouth, all of that stuff, but what else, tell me that? Hostages and terrorists killing people, of course, what else is new? There's that Jack Ryan thing in Illinois, but that's just another—

Jack Ryan? Wait, let me re-read the story for a second. Isn't Jack Ryan the Hunt for Red October guy? CIA super-spy and all that? Well, it's probably not the same one. And it's just another Democrat sex scandal with—

Holy shit! It says here this knob's a Republican! What the fuck is up with that? A Republican sex scandal? What did they do, have sex on the desk and then slash welfare?

Shit on a cracker! Sex clubs? Those are my favorite kinds of clubs! And his wife was not ordinary cloth coat kind of Republican wife! She's that hottie from Melrose Place and Star Trek, the one who wore the skin tight outfit and had Warp 9s out to here. The guy was running for Senator, too, no pissant Congressman from the House! Wow, this is the kind of conspiracy that really gets me going!

I call a do-over. Is it too late to scrap the front page?

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