One Evening in Texas

The “party of responsibility” is never the responsible party

© Bryan Zepp Jamieson
2/16/06
http://www.zeppscommentaries.com/VRWC/cheneydrunk.htm

To paraphrase the Dead Kennedys, maybe Cheney was “too drunk to duck hunt.”

There’s increasing speculation that Cheney may have been drinking fairly heavily prior to shooting Harry Whittington. It wouldn’t exactly be the first time in history that alcohol played a role in a hunting accident, and the possibility that Cheney was tipsy when the shooting occurred would explain some of the biggest mysteries about the whole thing, including how it happened in the first place, and why no cops were allowed to talk to Cheney about it for an entire day afterward.

Granted, law enforcement in Texas is basically pretty worthless. They are there to lean on the poor and minorities viciously, in order to keep them in line, and beyond that, serve no useful social purpose.

Imagine if some well-dressed guy in Texas was veering wildly down a Dallas street at 60 miles an hour, and plows into a parked school bus, injuring several of the kids. Two Texas cops witness this. They look at each other.

“That was a Caddy, wasn’t it?”

“Shore was. And the driver was white.”

“Well, let’s make sure he’s ok, and see if he needs a lift home. I don’t think that Caddy’s going anywhere for a while.”

So the two cops stroll over. One peers in. A middle-aged white man is slouched behind the wheel, eyes glassy, staring at nothing in particular. There is a strong smell of booze.

The cops look at each other, and the first turns back to the driver. “Judge? Judge Lay, sir? Can you hear me.”

The judge turns to him with a wide grin and says, “Why, ah kin hear yuh just fine, boy! Did you see the ass end of that bus go up when I hit it?” Yee-haw!”

The cop straightens up. “Sir, please step out of the vehicle.”

“Why? I ain’t done nuthin’ wrong.”

“That’s perfectly true, sir. We’re just going to give you a lift, see to it that you get home safe.”

As they are help the judge to the car, one of them glances over at the bus. “Some of those kids look like they are hurt pretty bad, Joe.”

“Yeah, that’s the truth. Better call an ambulance, and a unit. Oh, and tell ‘em to arrest the bus driver. Getting in the judge’s way like that...”

The judge looks at the first cop blurrily. “Did you say someone was hurt? I didn’t mean to hurt anyone...”

“Nobody was hurt, judge. Just some Negroes.”

Now, not all Texas cops are corrupt or inept. It’s possible that the cops who were duty-bound to talk to Dick Cheney as soon as possible after the shooting had a legitimate excuse. It was laundry day at the precinct, maybe, or they couldn’t find the ranch in the dark and decided to come back the next day when it was light. All sorts of good reasons.

But the fact remains that no cop talked to Dick Cheney for at least 18 hours after the accident, no blood test or Breathalyzer was given, and nobody even eyeballed Cheney to see if he might have been impaired in any way.

You try shooting someone, and then refuse to talk to the cops for a day afterward. Let me know how that works for you.

They’re lying about how the shooting occurred. I was talking yesterday to a guy who got hit by birdshot once, at a range of 100 feet. That’s just a hair more than the distance that Whittington supposedly was from Cheney. “It felt like someone had thrown some sand at me” is how he described it. No trips to the hospital, no heart attacks, no stays in intensive care. Nothing. It didn’t even sting.

It now appears that the damage Whittington took from the round was significantly more severe than was first reported, and makes it clear that he was standing a lot closer than they are owning up to: maybe 25 feet away, maybe even less.

Then there’s the matter of how a quail would be about where Whittington’s face was, or why Cheney would have reason to think there was a quail there. It was forty-five minutes before sundown, and nobody has claimed the low sun was a factor, so it can be supposed that Cheney would have no trouble seeing what he was shooting at. Since there’s no reason to suppose he shot Whittington on purpose, we have to assume that Cheney was impaired, and his judgement messed up badly enough that he was firing without looking to see what he was shooting at, or his reactions were so slow that when he turned to shoot at some imaginary quail, the shot was fired before he could understand what he was shooting at.

The far right have been villifying and smearing Ted Kennedy on far less suspicious circumstances for 36 years now.

Today, Cheney’s office decided to start speaking on behalf of the victim, describing him (sight unseen) as being in good spirits. Sure, you have some drunk shoot you in the face, putting you in intensive care, where you subsequently have a heart attack. You’ll be in good spirits. Heart attack victims are notoriously jovial, right?

Cheney at least accepts responsibility, saying “I was the one who pulled the trigger.” He allows that he may have had a beer. Quotes about drinking have appeared and mysteriously disappeared from some online news sites. Some of the right wing media whores had actually been trying to imply that in some way it was Whittington’s fault (“Oh, and tell ‘em to arrest the bus driver. Getting in the judge’s way like that...”), that he started Cheney, who, like all chickenhawks, tried to escape danger by walking away dragging one wing on the ground – or is that quail? – and when he dropped his wing, the gun went off.

We’ll never know for sure what happened that early evening in Texas. But there is one thing you can be pretty sure of.

No matter how innocuous or illegal the events may actually have been, Cheney, true to form, is lying and covering up about it. When he finally felt pressured enough to discuss it in public that he shot someone, he went, not before what’s left of America’s free press, but to Administration whore Brit Hume on Faux News.

Compared to the various crimes the Putsch junta has committed, shooting an old lawyer in Texas is pretty small potatoes. The next day, Cheney was out claiming that the Constitutionally powerless Vice President has the power to unilaterally declassify American intelligence.

But the public has noticed. And more to the point, they’ve noticed the lies and the cover up.

Cheney fucked up when he shot Whittington, and he’s been fucking up ever since.