Dick Cheney and the Culture of Entertainment

DallasBlog.com | William Murchison:

“Where I part company with the knights of the blogs and the kings of late night comedy is over the grisly P. T. Barnum culture of hokum amid which the really serious stuff plays out -- wars, hurricanes, budgets, bombings.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

Mr Murchison implies that the laughs at Vice President Cheney's expense are all that there is. That this little bit of comic relief shows that all the serious criticism of this administration's handling of wars, hurricanes, budgets, bombings should not be taken seriously after all, that it's all just part of a circus.

President Ford beaned a spectator with a golf ball. President Carter was attacked by a killer rabbit. Mr Murchison remembers these events thirty years later. I bet he remembers the administrations of the time too, none too fondly. The events are remembered because they were real life symbols of Presidencies beset with haplessness and fecklessness. All that was well documented in serious criticism that served as a backdrop for the late night comedians' jokes.

Likewise, Vice President Cheney shooting a hunting partner is symptomatic of a Washington gang that can't shoot straight in wars, hurricanes, budgets and bombings, and won't talk straight afterwards. The humor bites because of the reality behind the story. That's why this accident, too, will be remembered thirty years from now.

P.S. Dean Acheson was Secretary of State under Harry Truman. Our country today would be better off if Yale student George W Bush had read Acheson's memoirs, Present at the Creation, instead of partied.