Is making light of Cheney's accident cruel to Whittington?

[calmblueocean]

What do you think? I'm not arguing that the whole situation isn't funny, because it obviously is. Anytime some pompous windbag gets publicly humiliated, it's funny. And Cheney is beyond being a mere pompous windbag. But if it were your dad in the hospital, what would you think as you listened to all the people making jokes about it? Would you find them insensitive, or would you still see the humor in it, even though your father's life was at risk?

[Momgonepostal]

1. If it were my Dad, I wouldn't be laughing.

I'd be mad and probably calling Cheney a criminal.

[Coexist]

2. I would not be watching the news or late night t.v.

for the jokes - until I knew he was okay.

You can't control what people will do or say - only how you will react to it. I would avoid the entire situation while my parent was in the hospital.

[meisje]

3. If he is on his deathbed, then it is a bit cruel. But hey, we're Americans

[DoYouEverWonder]

10. You should read about his role in Funeralgate

then you might not feel so bad for him.

[rodeodance]

4. Mr. W. is the Victim.. keep telling people that --Cheney is not the vict

im in this story.

[Greyhound]

5. Fuck him, he's a repuke lawyer, if he'd only die we might make

some progress. I'm sure the thousands of victims he's ruined over the years are hoping he's going through unimaginable pain.

[MADem]

6. Whittington is an EMINENT DOMAIN ATTORNEY, a GOP windbag

You know, one of those sonsabitches who tosses grandma out of the home she has lived in for seventy years with compensation below actual fair market value so some rich bastard can build a stadium or other profit-making enterprise.

Hell, no one deserves to be shot, but I have the sense that, unless you are a prison chaplain, you know people by the company they keep. He was hanging out with the VeePee...ya lie down with dawgs, ya get up with fleas. You hunt with a robot, you come away full of steel pellets...

Besides, he's a lawyer at a huge law firm--surely some colleague can help him sue the bum, should he have a mind to do that!

[Bridget Burke]

15. Molly Ivins has some kind words for Mr Whittington....

AUSTIN, Texas (Creators Syndicate) -- Of course the jokes are flying all over Texas -- what's the fine for shooting a lawyer? -- and so forth. Dick-Cheney-shooting-Harry-Whittington is fraught, as they say, with irony. It's not as though the ground in Texas is littered with liberal Republicans. I think the vice president winged the only one we've got.

Not that I accuse Harry Whittington of being an actual liberal -- only by Texas Republican standards, and that sets the bar about the height of a matchbook. Nevertheless, Whittington is seriously civilized, particularly on the issues of crime, punishment and prisons. He served on both the Texas Board of Corrections and on the bonding authority that builds prisons. As he has often said, prisons do not curb crime, they are hothouses for crime: "Prisons are to crime what greenhouses are to plants." ....

When Whittington was the chairman of Texas Public Finance Authority, he had a devastating set of numbers on the demand for more, more, more prison beds. As Whittington was wont to point out, the only thing prisons are good for is segregating violent people from the rest of society, and most of them belong in psychiatric hospitals to begin with. The severity of sentences has no effect on crime.

www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/02/14/ivins.cheney/

Perhaps Molly is not liberal enough for you?

[MADem]

17. Curious remark, there

Perhaps Molly is not liberal enough for you?

Ms. Ivins agrees with Whittington on a SINGLE issue, and by that, you infer that I find Molly insufficiently liberal?????

Where did you take your course in logic??

Note what else she said about the guy, right from the git-go: Not that I accuse Harry Whittington of being an actual liberal -- only by Texas Republican standards, and that sets the bar about the height of a matchbook.

Hardly sounds like a ringing endorsement of his overarching liberal tendencies, out here in the real world, at any rate.

Whittington was Bush's go-to guy on FUNERALGATE--they threw him into that business to get the dogs off Georgie. He's given a bundle to the GOP. He only has problems with eminent domain when it affects HIS property--but then, he's rich enough to bring suit, and stubborn enough to draw cases out to get money for himself when poor folks just have to eat it.

He was hunting with Darth, fachrissake. I doubt we'll see him at Democratic fundraisers any time soon.

So, just because he got shot, all of a sudden he's Poor Pitiful Pearl? Let's have a look at Mister Whittington:

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) -- The man accidentally shot by Vice President Dick Cheney is an avid hunter and a longtime Republican activist who owns the downtown building where the GOP's rise to power in Texas was in large part engineered....Whittington, a lawyer, owns the Vaughn building in Austin, which has hosted Republican campaign headquarters for decades. George W. Bush used the building for his gubernatorial campaigns, current Texas Gov. Rick Perry is there now, and Karl Rove, the architect of Bush's rise to the presidency, used to have an office there as well.

Over the years, the party evolved from minor player to the dominant force in the state. Every statewide elected official in Texas is a Republican.

"Anyone who's been involved in Republican politics in 20 years knows and respects Harry Whittington," Republican consultant Ray Sullivan said. "Twenty years ago there were very few prominent Republicans in Texas and even fewer in Austin. He was a Texas Republican long before it was cool."... http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/02/13/cheney.whittington.ap/

This is the guy that we have to thank for the Monkey's rise to power, in essence. Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas...or a face full of pellets.

[Bridget Burke]

20. Perhaps Molly is too liberal for you, then.

She hasn't come out & said that Whittington deserves to die.

[MADem]

23. Well, neither did I

Perhaps you'd benefit from a reading course as well as a logic course. You're getting damn close to insulting, frankly.

What I said was NO ONE DESERVES TO BE SHOT. How you can translate that into suggesting that the guy deserves to die, I have no idea.

[Bridget Burke]

25. Nobody deserves to be shot, BUT.......

Yes, that one little phrase almost shows you care. BUT--most of your messages explain "lie down with dogs, get up with fleas." And similar original phrases.

Thanks for being concerned about my education!

[MADem]

26. But what???

The guy is a sleazy GOP bastard who went out hunting with one of the biggest assholes on the planet, and likely after having a few drinks, the VeePee got careless and the guy ended up full of birdshot. I didn't force him to attend that hunting party, he did it on his own. I didn't encourage him to bankroll the TX GOP, either.

What do you want from me? I refuse to turn this bastard, who brought Bush to power in TX, into Mother Theresa just because his scummy pal, the VP, shot him.

For the life of me I cannot understand what you are on about, and why you have singled me out when you are the one having reading comprehension challenges...between your assertions about my views towards the venerable Molly Ivins and suggesting that I wanted someone to die, you just are not making sense.

[Blue Diadem]

29. MADem, I don't believe he's an eminent domain lawyer, he's currently

along with his family, fighting the eminent domain declared against a city block that he and his family own. I believe it's already been taken and built on by the city. I read the story around DU..somewhere.

Understand, I'm certainly not saying he's not a GOP windbag..I'm quite sure he is. I just don't think he's on the side of eminent domain.

[MADem]

30. He is not on the side of eminent domain when it affects HIM

But he sure knows how to press a deal to his advantage. He timed that case (and his outrage) so that he ended up many, many tens of millions of dollars richer, by delaying his suit until the builders had constructed on his land--he ended up getting a water chilling plant and a huge parking garage out of it, if I remember. The TX Supreme Court has already ruled in his favor on that case--so once again, the rich get richer. The land USE remains the same had eminent domain prevailed, but now he gets the profits. We aren't talking in this instance about tossing folks out of their homes, here, we're talking about a guy who let the wheels grind, let the construction happen, and then pounced to take the dough and the assets only AFTER the state and others made the investment.

This guy bankrolled Poppy, he bankrolled Baby, he bankrolled DeLay, he's responsible for the TX legislature being a GOP entity...now, I am not saying that he is totally evil; but surely he is misguided at best, and WEAK in terms of integrity certainly.

You don't go a-huntin' with a scumbag like Drunken "DUCK!!!!" Cheney if you aren't in accord with some, if not most, of his policies. Frankly, he played a big--damn near pivotal--role in putting those bums in the WH, and DeLay in the legislature...ya gotta wonder how he can sleep at night.

[Wilber_Stool]

7. Even though Wittington is considered a

liberal Repub, I see this more as Hitler shooting Rudolf Hess. I don't feel too bad for either of them.

[MADem]

18. But he isn't, really--he engineered the Monkey's rise to power

See the cite in post 17. He friken cajoled, facilitated and bankrolled the TX GOP, damn near.

[warrens]

8. NEGLIGENCE, not ACCIDENT

Shooting without looking is NEGLIGENCE.

[janx]

9. Yes. n/t

[EC]

11. No, it's pretty much pointing out that we have a Vice

President that doesn't bother taking aim before he fires....

[Garbo 2004]

12. Cheney and his "spokeswoman" first made light of the incident and

injuries. They damn well knew his condition and she spoke to the press not only making light of his injuries "he was knocked silly but he was fine" as if an apple had fallen from a tree and hit him on the head, they went further and blamed him for getting himself shot. Scotty slipped and said that Armstrong had worked with the VP on how they would handle informing the press. They stamped their spin on it with their attempts at damage control, not letting on how seriously the guy was hurt and it making it sound like he was just a tad "peppered." It was something to be laughed off, oh it's something that happens all the time, nothing serious here.

(Now the VP's office is claiming that they had Armstrong inform the media rather than rather than the VP because an eyewitness would have more credibility. LOL Except the "eyewitness" was sitting in a car, didn't see anything except the SS running and thought Cheney'd had another heart attack. So much for that "credible eyewitness." They are so full of lies they can't keep them straight.)

So the jokes and levity ensued, primarily because that's the tone they set while trying to save Cheney's fat ass and not let on that he damn near killed the guy.

Then Scotty made jokes about it at the presser on TV, after they knew that the guy had been rushed back into ICU.

They set the tone themselves and only after it was clear that it was not a mere superficial "peppering" did most folks without inside info realize that this guy was lucky to be alive. They're still trying to minimize it, but if anyone is reprehensibly guilty of making light of the incident and Whittington's condition, look to the Executive branch and their accolytes. I would imagine Whittington's family is not particularly pleased, but one doesn't imagine one will see them speaking out against the VP and how he handled the aftermath. It's a "family thing" like the cosa nostra, ya know.

[calmblueocean]

27. Good point.

If they want Dems to stop joking, then they had better start acknowledging the seriousness of Cheney's negligence,

[SmokingJacket]

13. It's less funny now that he's obviously in worse shape.

It won't be funny at all if he dies.

However... he *was* out shooting with Cheeny. Lie down with a dog, get up with fleas... There is room to make fun of a not-totally-innocent victim, here, IMHO.

Unless he croaks.

[Cleita]

14. Unfortunately, if you wallow with pigs,

you are going to get shit on you. The innocent victims are the family members, but this is universal. Think of what Saddam's daughters are feeling about their dad right now.

[johnnie]

16. At first

When we were told that he got peppered and is just peachy, it was a little easier to "make light". I don't feel right about it now that we know that this was a lot worse than we were led to believe. I will admit that originally I was hesitant to say much knowing how people like dick and georgie lie, I made a few comments, but nothing I would consider "tacky".

[July]

19. Well, apparently McLellan and Jeb Bush have also joked about it.

Of course, they're Republicans, so they will only be outraged if we do it.

[Cocoa]

21. not as bad a shotgun blast in the face

[B Calm]

22. We all know that Cheney is a 800 year old evil vampire. My guess

is that Whittington is probably one too!

[rman]

24. yes

[Johonny]

28. No

Making fun of Cheney is funny, making fun of Whittington is cruel. However comedy itself is often a form of cruelness.