Out of the same sick sense of curiosity one feels when viewing gnarled steel and broken glass on a highway after a traffic accident (and hopefully everyone involved in it up and moving around reasonably well), I opted to read a very small bit of a screed by right-wing icon Michael Reagan that appeared in (where else) The Bucks County Courier Times this morning. The part I focused on was the very end where Reagan said, in effect, that liberals calling the vice president’s recent hunting accident “Cheney’s Chappaquiddick” should stop it, seeing as how Mary Jo Kopechne actually died all those years ago, and Harry Whittington, fortunately, was released from the hospital today.
Reagan HAS TO BE making that up, I thought to myself. There’s no way that a comparison between those two events could be drawn by anyone but a Repug sympathizer looking for pity and a reason to blame the opposition both at once.
Well, just to make sure, I did a Google search to confirm my brilliant theory before I wrote this.
Oops (I stopped counting the number of hits I got with that phrase at 40…I’m sure it was substantially more, with the most prominent offender being R.J. Eskow of The Huffington Post).
To anyone out there who may be reading this who is or would be a guilty party to this, I have a simple favor to ask:
KNOCK IT OFF!!! (It totally sickens me to have to actually agree with Reagan.)
(I mean, I give Eskow credit for digging into the angles of the story regarding alcohol and some of the “nudge, nudge, wink, wink” stuff surrounding Cheney and Whittington’s female companions, but to compare this to Chappy is ridiculous for the simple reason that CHENEY, WHITTINGTON, AND EVERYONE ELSE SURVIVED.)
Aside from the reason I mentioned above (Ted K./Dead Person vs. Cheney/Living But Dangerously Injured One), this shouldn’t happen because, when we make these stupid comparisons, all we do is give ammunition (so to speak) to the other side. And believe me when I tell you that it would make me VERY HAPPY to NEVER HAVE TO BE REMINDED OF CHAPPAQUIDDICK AGAIN BY A REPUG OR ONE OF THEIR SYMPATHIZERS.
(I swear, I once worked with a man in his 50s in the Chester County, PA area who had a pacemaker and just about went into convulsions when you mentioned that particular “C” word to him since he despised Ted Kennedy so thoroughly…yes, it was terrible, but the unfortunate fact is that people in power do these things and cover them up; we don’t have to like it, but merely act like adults and acknowledge the reality – protest as much as we reasonably can and then LET IT REST, FOR GOD’s SAKE!). And for a liberal/progressive/Democrat/whatever to bring this kind of heaping abuse on oneself by casually inviting this comparison is something that I would consider an act of narcissistic lunacy.
Hey, I’m laughing at the Cheney jokes as loudly as anyone, especially now that Harry Whittington is going home, as I mentioned. But is it asking too much to know where to draw the line?
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