Mail & Guardian
Mail & Guardian

Duck, it’s Dick

2 min read

United States comedians and satirists have seized upon Vice-President Dick Cheney’s quail hunting accident, in which he fired shotgun pellets at a lawyer friend Harry Whittington. Here are some of the talk show jokes, news headlines and blog comments about Cheney:

David Letterman on his talk show

  • “Good news, ladies and gentlemen, we have finally located weapons of mass destruction: it’s Dick Cheney.”

  • “Here is the sad part. Before the trip, Donald Rumsfeld had denied the guy’s request for body armuor.”

  • “The guy who got gunned down … he is a Republican lawyer and big Republican donor, and fortunately, the buckshot was deflected by wads of laundered cash.”

    • Jay Leno on his talk show

    • “When people heard he shot a lawyer, his popularity in now 92%.”

  • “When the ambulance got there, out of the force of the habit they put Cheney on the stretcher.”

  • “I think also Cheney is starting to lose it. After he shot the guy, he screamed: ‘Anyone else wants to call domestic wiretapping illegal?'”

  • “And here is something I just found out today about the incident. You didn’t know this. Turns out Cheney tortured the guy for half an hour before he shot him.”

  • “The guy Cheney shot was wearing a bright orange hat and orange jacket. Cheney said he thought it was a gay quail.”

    • Jon Stewart on his satirical The Daily Show

    Stewart recalled that Aaron Burr was the last Vice-President to shoot someone when he killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel in 1804: “Alexander Hamilton, of course, was shot in a duel with Aaron Burr over issues of honour, integrity and political maneuvering. Whittington was mistaken for a bird.”

    Rush Limbaugh, conservative radio show presenter

    “Would you rather go hunting with Dick Cheney or riding in a car over a bridge with Ted Kennedy?”

    New York Daily News tabloid’s headline: “Duck, It’s Dick”:

    Andy Borowitz on his political blog www.borowitzreport.com

    “Mr Cheney acknowledged that the man he sprayed with pellets on Saturday was not Ayman al-Zawahiri [the al-Qaeda leader] but rather Harry Whittington, a 78-year-old millionaire lawyer from Austin, blaming the mix-up on “faulty intelligence”. – AFP