“Farren had my number years ago.”
Although La CityBeat went out of business months ago, I wondered last night, as I idled online, if the website was still up. And yes, it was. There was even a file of my old columns. Click here to check it out. This one about Dick Cheney from 2007 has certainly stood the test of time.
“The humorous suggestion has more than once been made that Dick Cheney is, in fact, something other than human. Most recently Maureen Dowd came close to calling the vice president an alien in her New York Times column: "I've always thought Cheney was way out there - the most Voldemort-like official I've run across. But ... I never imagined that he would declare himself not only above the law, not only above the president, but actually his own dark planet."
At the opposite extreme, conspiracy theorist David Icke seriously claims that Cheney is actually a shape-shifting reptilian from inside the Hollow Earth with an agenda of world conquest. But Icke, a former British soccer player whose theories cloak a virulent and calculated anti-Semitism, can hardly be considered a reliable source. He does, however, illustrate the odd frequency with which science fiction is used to denigrate the veep.
This seems a unique phenomenon in American political and cultural history. Certainly, every president and vice president has come in for his share of abuse: FDR and JFK were both called communists, Nixon was a crook, Gerald Ford was a stumbling doofus, Jimmy Carter was ineffectual, Reagan was a puppet, Dan Quayle was a moron, Bill Clinton couldn't keep his pants zipped, and LBJ picked up beagles by their ears. All offensive, but strictly terrestrial. Cheney, on the other hand, with approval ratings that dipped as low as 18 percent in mid-2006, may have alienated so many of us that we look for alien metaphors to express our loathing for the man.
An intensive Web search (during which my computer froze, I swear) revealed that the Cheney-as-alien concept runs deep. He was referred to as "Dark Lord of the Sith" more times than I care to count, and his face has been Photoshopped onto every unholy phase of Anakin Skywalker metamorphosing into Darth Vader. On June 27, a Cheney-is-an-alien joke appeared on the blog of an anonymous Washington lawyer (Lawyerworldland.blogspot.com). The author mock-quoted White House Press Secretary Tony Snow as saying Cheney had "complete immunity from everything" and "not only is he not part of the Executive Branch, but strictly speaking not even part of the human race."
Instead of Star Wars, a blogger called Defective Yeti used the Alien movie cycle for an elaborate parallel. "The xenomorph has a complex lifecycle," D. Yeti writes. "After hatching from an egg, the 'facehugger' implants an embryo deep within the body of the host organism. Sometime later the parasite violently emerges from its carrier, then rapidly grows to a near-perfect killing machine. This reminds me of nothing so much as Dick Cheney. He found a host organism easily enough. In 1999, Cheney headed up Bush's Vice-Presidential Search Committee, only to announce that he was the most qualified man for the job. After Bush was elected, Cheney gestated deep within the body politic. Now, his metamorphosis is complete, he ruptures forth ... and if the democracy that incubated him is killed in the process, so be it ... In January 2009 it will be fun to watch Hillary strap herself into a power-loader, and blow Cheney out of an airlock."
Of course, Cheney himself hardly confirms his humanity. The abnormal arrogance, the mysterious disappearances, the strange beliefs in the nature of his office the weird demand that Google Earth pixilate his official residence, and recent revelation on HuffPo that "Cheney runs to an undisclosed location because he, his doctors, and the Secret Service know that his pacemaker is not shielded from EMR [electronic medical records] or EMP [electromagnetic pulse]" all provide grist for speculations straight out of Invasion of Body Snatchers. The recent news of the Mosler, man-sized safe in Cheney's office, however, took one blog commentator straight in the direction of H. P. Lovecraft: "Be warned that it's not really a safe," goes the posting. "When you open the door to that safe, it actually leads straight to hell."
And click here for Bob singing Masters Of War which has also stood the test of time.
Although La CityBeat went out of business months ago, I wondered last night, as I idled online, if the website was still up. And yes, it was. There was even a file of my old columns. Click here to check it out. This one about Dick Cheney from 2007 has certainly stood the test of time.
“The humorous suggestion has more than once been made that Dick Cheney is, in fact, something other than human. Most recently Maureen Dowd came close to calling the vice president an alien in her New York Times column: "I've always thought Cheney was way out there - the most Voldemort-like official I've run across. But ... I never imagined that he would declare himself not only above the law, not only above the president, but actually his own dark planet."
At the opposite extreme, conspiracy theorist David Icke seriously claims that Cheney is actually a shape-shifting reptilian from inside the Hollow Earth with an agenda of world conquest. But Icke, a former British soccer player whose theories cloak a virulent and calculated anti-Semitism, can hardly be considered a reliable source. He does, however, illustrate the odd frequency with which science fiction is used to denigrate the veep.
This seems a unique phenomenon in American political and cultural history. Certainly, every president and vice president has come in for his share of abuse: FDR and JFK were both called communists, Nixon was a crook, Gerald Ford was a stumbling doofus, Jimmy Carter was ineffectual, Reagan was a puppet, Dan Quayle was a moron, Bill Clinton couldn't keep his pants zipped, and LBJ picked up beagles by their ears. All offensive, but strictly terrestrial. Cheney, on the other hand, with approval ratings that dipped as low as 18 percent in mid-2006, may have alienated so many of us that we look for alien metaphors to express our loathing for the man.
An intensive Web search (during which my computer froze, I swear) revealed that the Cheney-as-alien concept runs deep. He was referred to as "Dark Lord of the Sith" more times than I care to count, and his face has been Photoshopped onto every unholy phase of Anakin Skywalker metamorphosing into Darth Vader. On June 27, a Cheney-is-an-alien joke appeared on the blog of an anonymous Washington lawyer (Lawyerworldland.blogspot.com). The author mock-quoted White House Press Secretary Tony Snow as saying Cheney had "complete immunity from everything" and "not only is he not part of the Executive Branch, but strictly speaking not even part of the human race."
Instead of Star Wars, a blogger called Defective Yeti used the Alien movie cycle for an elaborate parallel. "The xenomorph has a complex lifecycle," D. Yeti writes. "After hatching from an egg, the 'facehugger' implants an embryo deep within the body of the host organism. Sometime later the parasite violently emerges from its carrier, then rapidly grows to a near-perfect killing machine. This reminds me of nothing so much as Dick Cheney. He found a host organism easily enough. In 1999, Cheney headed up Bush's Vice-Presidential Search Committee, only to announce that he was the most qualified man for the job. After Bush was elected, Cheney gestated deep within the body politic. Now, his metamorphosis is complete, he ruptures forth ... and if the democracy that incubated him is killed in the process, so be it ... In January 2009 it will be fun to watch Hillary strap herself into a power-loader, and blow Cheney out of an airlock."
Of course, Cheney himself hardly confirms his humanity. The abnormal arrogance, the mysterious disappearances, the strange beliefs in the nature of his office the weird demand that Google Earth pixilate his official residence, and recent revelation on HuffPo that "Cheney runs to an undisclosed location because he, his doctors, and the Secret Service know that his pacemaker is not shielded from EMR [electronic medical records] or EMP [electromagnetic pulse]" all provide grist for speculations straight out of Invasion of Body Snatchers. The recent news of the Mosler, man-sized safe in Cheney's office, however, took one blog commentator straight in the direction of H. P. Lovecraft: "Be warned that it's not really a safe," goes the posting. "When you open the door to that safe, it actually leads straight to hell."
And click here for Bob singing Masters Of War which has also stood the test of time.
The secret word is Paranormal
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4 comments:
All of which, while being incredibly credible, implies that Cheney at least still has some sort of pulse. Rumsfeld, on the other hand…
I DO COCAINE!
Good for you Doc Roc.
I miss Dick Cheney. I miss George Bush, too. Obama just isn't funny.
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