Too Young to Die

The whole soap opera surrounding the Cheney shooting becomes more bizarre by the minute.

Especially hilarious is all the emoting going on by the info-babes and info-studmuffins on the boob tube. They somberly inform the spokespeople hired to cover Cheney's butt that they "hope Mr. Whittington makes a full and speedy recovery."

What a load of utter horse-biscuits. They are positively salivating over the possibility that the old gentleman might die.

Harry Whittington is seventy-eight. My dad, who just passed away five months ago, was seventy-eight. Back when I was in high school, THIRTY seemed ancient to me. Now I am forty-three, and I think even seventy-eight is too young to die.

Their serious and somber thespian frowny-faces aside, I wonder if any of the dressed-up children who read the teleprompters on the TV news have any concept of the fact that the characters peopling their stories are ACTUAL HUMAN BEINGS, with REAL LIVES.

Dick Cheney isn't going to spend one day in prison if his hunting buddy dies. Nor -- despite my tremendous disgust for the Veep -- do I believe he should.

This story isn't funny anymore. It stopped being funny when Mr. Whittington had a heart attack. It probably wasn't in very good taste to imagine it was funny in the first place.

The one I'm thinking of, other than the patient in his hospital bed, is Dick Cheney's daughter, Mary. I can sort of identify with Mary. Like me, she has a father whose political views (at least on some matters) she may not agree with. Thank the Good Lord, at the very least, that MY dad wasn't Vice President. I have been spared a "Dear Lori" website, and megatons of nagging email.

Excuse me, whiny GLBT leftists, but exactly what the hell did you really expect Mary Cheney to do? Don't any of you have parents, yourselves? How friggin' successful have YOU been in totally changing THEIR minds about everything? Do you chalk it up as a personal failing on your part if they -- like you -- continue having their own minds?

Dick Cheney came out in opposition to the Federal Marriage Amendment, at a time when it was near political suicide for him to have done so. He had a bad ticker, his political stock was plunging, many Republican bigwigs wanted Bush to replace him, in his run for a second term, with a younger and less-controversial running mate. But he spoke out against something his own President dared not oppose. Tell me he's an arrogant jerk, tell me he's a warmonger and a war profiteer, tell me he's an engineer of prison camp torture, and that he chickened out of Vietnam and all the rest of it and you're probably right -- but keep your nose the hell out of his family relationships. Some things ought to remain sacred, and that's one of them.

Every time our Veep goes to the cardiologist, the gleeful media death-watch begins anew. Well, I, for one, hope that he lives at least long enough to recognize the humanity of all those over whom he wields power. Mary Cheney's dad is definitely too young to die.