[Mb-civic] Satirizing Dick Cheney - Ellen Goodman - Boston Globe Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

  Satirizing Dick Cheney

By Ellen Goodman  |  February 17, 2006  |  The Boston Globe

MY PROFESSIONAL tribe has long followed the motto best expressed by a 
former editor of mine: ''If you have a fish in a barrel, shoot it." Of 
course this time, the target wasn't a fish, it was a quail -- or, to be 
more precise, a person behind a quail. It also wasn't in a barrel. It 
was on a Texas ranch. But you get the idea.

After the vice president of the United States shot a hunting companion, 
it was open season on Dead-Eye Dick. Reporters of print, broadcast, and 
blog, and comics of cartoon and late-night television released a 
fusillade of outrage and a barrage of jokes on the man who shot himself 
in the foot by stifling the story and giving opponents enough ammo to 
make him a sitting duck for the duration of his time in office. Block 
this metaphor.

There is nothing (alas) that infuriates White House reporters more than 
getting stiffed on a big story for 20 hours, unless of course it's 
getting beaten by the Corpus Christi Caller-Times. So the saga of the 
Vice President Who Couldn't Shoot Straight was fodder for the talk shows 
and comedy centrals, and will remain so until (and unless) Cheney offers 
some wonderful self-deprecating one-liners on his hunting disabilities 
at the annual Gridiron gathering of journalists. Whereupon all will be 
forgiven and he will revert to Good Ole Dick status.

Well, the jokes went into remission after Harry Whittington suffered a 
minor heart attack, but amid wishes for his speedy recovery, I confess 
to some guilty pleasure in finding Cheney the target of this 
journalistic birdshot.

What opponent couldn't chortle at Rob Corddry's riff on ''The Daily 
Show." The vice president, he intoned, was following the best 
intelligence that said there were quail in the bush. Of course, the 
quail turned out to be the 78-year-old man, but ''even knowing that 
today, Mr. Cheney insists -- he still would have shot Mr. Whittington in 
the face."

What woman couldn't chortle at ranch owner Katharine Armstrong's remark 
that Whittington wouldn't take offense at being shot. ''This happens, 
and my God, I've never seen a case of hard feelings. I bet this would 
deepen their friendship." Male bonding through birdshot! Thank goodness 
he didn't shoot the other hunter, Ambassador Pam Willeford. You know how 
personally women take things!

But a more acceptable reason for my guilty pleasure is the timing. This 
shooting story comes right in the middle of the cartoon crisis that has 
ignited outrage across much of the Muslim world.

Many Muslims have taken the sophomoric Danish cartoons -- see Mohammed's 
turban as a bomb -- seriously and blasphemously. This has not only 
triggered riots but an international shouting match between those crying 
''free speech" and those crying ''hate speech."

Many in the West defend the right to be offensive as a core value. 
Italy's reform minister had T-shirts made with the offensive cartoons. 
Many Muslims now insist that we offend their values alone. To prove a 
point, the largest Iranian newspaper called for cartoons making fun of 
the Holocaust. There you go -- tit for tat -- anti-Semitic cartoons in 
return for anti-Mohammed cartoons. That'll show those Christians in Europe!

Years ago, a cartoonist in my office would go over the top from time to 
time and produce what we privately called a ''Pope with a Swastika" 
cartoon. What it lacked in humor, it made up for in offensiveness and 
never got in the paper. The Danish cartoons weren't funny enough to get 
over my taste threshold.

But many suggest that the furor over the cartoons was actually ratcheted 
up by Middle Eastern governments trying to turn the attention of their 
citizenry from their own ineptitude to the culture wars. In that case, 
the peppering of Dick Cheney is an international reminder to both sides 
that the real reason to protect free speech is to criticize the people 
who govern you. The real reason for satire is to make fun, with 
impunity, of your leaders.

My uncle, a World War II veteran, tells the classic story of Soviet and 
American allies in a bar. An American soldier decides to illustrate the 
difference between the two countries. ''In my country," he announces, 
''I can stand up and call Franklin Roosevelt an a-hole." The Soviet 
solder says there's no difference. ''In my country, I can also call 
Franklin Roosevelt an a-hole."

The fundamental difference between us and them isn't who can insult 
whose sacred cows, but who can criticize whose leaders. For that, we 
tolerate excess.

The other difference, of course, is that in countries with a free press, 
leaders actually do have to tell the people when they shoot someone. 
Promptly.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/02/17/satirizing_dick_cheney/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-civic/attachments/20060217/46e808cf/attachment.htm