Cheney as Ed McMahon (Wolcott)

[kskiska]

On Top of Old Baldy

(snip)

Watching Cheney in inaction, a snapshot phrase popped into my head: "broken-down sidekick."

That's what our vice president is, a broken-down sidekick ready for a lawn sale.

Plopped there on the stage surrounded by loyalty-oathed Republicans--wife Lynne, the honorary den mother of The 'L' Word at his side--Cheney reminded me of Ed McMahon. Not the McMahon of the brassy, highflying Tonight Show years (though George Bush's mannerisms are clearly modeled on Johnny Carson's), but the Ed of the Jerry Lewis telethons and Larry King appearances. A slow-molasses Ed, consumed with bitterness against foes real and imagined, getting through each day on nothing but spite and chocolate eclairs stuffed in his mouth by his evil spouse.

Johnny Carson and Ed McMahon represented something beautiful in show business that Bush and Cheney have grimily profaned. No wonder Carson spends his retirement years sailing and learning Swahili; it must sicken a man of Carson's fine-graded taste having these cheap imitators in charge.

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