The New Yorker has the inside scoop on what really ocurred when Dick Cheney threw down on Sen. Patrick Leahy, (D.-Vermont):
As a quick-thinking senatorial aide switched on the Senate’s public-address system and cued up the infamous “Seven Minutes of Funk” break, Mr. Leahy and Mr. Cheney went head-to-head in what can only be described as a “take no prisoners” freestyle rap battle….
Unfortunately, as other senators (along with assorted aides and support-staff members) were casting their votes to decide the winner, using the admittedly subjective but generally accepted “Make some noise up in here!” protocols, Mr. Cheney and Mr. Leahy took the proceedings to what one aide accurately described as “the next level.”
Edward M. Kennedy (D.-Mass.) was the first to notice that the two men were circling each other, Mr. Cheney brandishing a switchblade and Mr. Leahy the jagged neck of a broken bottle.
“Oh, snap!” Mr. Kennedy recalls thinking at the time. “It’s getting kind of hectic up in this piece.”
Man, some of those professional writers are almost as funny as the Fafblog!
{ 4 comments }
serial catowner 07.20.04 at 9:34 pm
And nobody has thought to comment that that was once the actual case in the Congress? Page Smith tells us that in the Antebellum period many congressmen regularly armed themselves with pistols, daggers, and heavy canes before attending a session.
bellatrys 07.20.04 at 10:54 pm
More than that – people got *killed*! There’s a true story of a congressman stabbing another congressman to death with a Bowie knife. There was also the Senator (Calhoun?) who was beaten so badly he never recovered, because he was against slavery, with one of those canes. All on the floor there. (Parliament’s benches are exactly just too far for people on each side to reach each other with a longsword, btw.)
will 07.21.04 at 4:30 am
>There was also the Senator (Calhoun?) who was beaten so badly he never recovered, because he was against slavery, with one of those canes. < That's Charles Sumner, who, as the page tells us, “was beaten unconscious by Preston Brooks, a congressman from South Carolina. His injuries stopped him from attending the Senate for the next three years.”
(Anyone else find it odd that Sparatacus has so many pages on lefties and left sectariana, e.g. this? Maybe the name is reference to Luxemburg?)
Rana 07.23.04 at 7:09 pm
Oh, you didn’t include the funniest part of that piece — the convoluted “family paper” versions of what the two men supposedly said to each other.
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