Cheney and His Clowns

Quick! Think of the worst possible event to attend ever. What? They make you do what with a fishing pole? Yeah, that sounds pretty bad, but still not as bad as this.

On Monday, October 7, the conservative muckety-mucks came together at the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan to roast the former vice president Dick Cheney. According to BuzzFeed’s editor in chief Ben Smith, the laughs were won by riffing on the most controversial policies of the George W. Bush administration’s war on terror.

The soiree, hosted by the conservative Commentary magazine, featured some of the country’s leading comedians, like former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and former attorney general Michael Mukasey. According to Smith’s report, these old jokers “drew a mix of chuckles and winces with jokes that left few lines uncrossed, according to three guests.”

Now that is a hot ticket. The only thing that could’ve made the evening more painful would have been, say, Joe Lieberman doing stand-up. Oh, wait.

Connecticut’s former Independent senator Joe Lieberman did, in fact, toss out some jokes for the gathered crowd. “[He] said something to the effect that it’s nice that we’re all here at the Plaza instead of in cages after some war crimes trial,” one attendee reported.

Sounds like complete torture to sit through, right? Did anyone use that line? I’ll sell it for ten dollars. But someone probably did use it, because, according to eyewitnesses, torture jokes were all the rage at Cheney’s Plaza party.

Some choice punchlines from the evening included former secretary of state Colin Powell and president Barack Obama. Ha, ha.

Other major targets included former Secretary of State Colin Powell, mocked for leaking, and President Barack Obama, who was mocked, repeatedly, for the relative strength of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Ha. Two of the most powerful African-American politicians in our nation’s history make a room of conservative white dudes LOL.

Scooter Libby, everyone’s favorite, brought down the house with jokes about that wacky time he was imprisoned for obstructing a federal investigation into the outing of a CIA agent.

Libby, for his part, made light of his imprisonment—and lack of a presidential pardon.

“Libby said George Bush sent a note: ‘Pardon me, I can’t make it,’” one guest recalled.

And Rummy–fuckin’ Rummy!–was there to bring the house down with his torture shtick: “Separately, Rumsfeld joked about Cheney waterboarding fish.” God, that’s classic–add a little follow-up about Rumsfeld signing off on it, and you’ve got the beginnings of a routine.

Hey now, I can hear some of you protest. Jim, it was a roast. Roasts feature inappropriate comedy. Why do you hate fun, Jim?

To which I respond: roasts are fine. Like those ones on Comedy Central. The one with Joan Rivers: she is old and has had a lot of plastic surgery. Ha, ha. James Franco: he seems stoned and writes dumb fiction. Heh. David Hasselhoff: I forget the David Hasselhoff jokes. He’s successful in Germany or something, loves hamburgers? Donald Trump: he has ludicrous hair.

But, let’s do an experiment with this Cheney roast, in the same vein of that classic test: “If the foreign press were covering it, how would it read?”

Former United States vice president Dick Cheney and fellow senior members of the George W. Bush administration gathered at a luxury New York City hotel Monday evening to send up Cheney by making jokes, including several about the torture program the administration had controversially constructed. The event, hosted by a militaristic news journal, made light of the fact that Cheney, and other members of the second Bush administration, had successfully evaded prosecution for the commission of internationally recognized war crimes. Among those telling jokes were the administration’s head of defense, top legal official, and Cheney’s former top aide, who, incidentally, served prison time for covering up the government’s abuse of power.

Ha, ha, waterboarding fish . . . classic. That is so Dick.