July 20, 2004

When Cheney Is On The Mic, It's Like a Cookie, They All Crumble

Posted by Belle Waring

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!

Posted on July 20, 2004 03:37 PM UTC
Comments

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.

Posted by serial catowner · July 20, 2004 09:34 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.)

Posted by bellatrys · July 20, 2004 10:54 PM

>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?)

Posted by will · July 21, 2004 04:30 AM

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.

Posted by Rana · July 23, 2004 07:09 PM
Followups

→ Dick Cheney --- The Remix Version.
Excerpt: It's getting increasingly hard to tell the parody from the reality these days. Maybe I should stop trying.Read more at Musings
→ The New Yorker on the Leahy-Cheney spat.
Excerpt: Via Crooked Timber: The New Yorker has a hilarious piece on Vice President Cheney’s recent suggestion that Vermont Senator Pat Leahy intercourse himself: At this point, according to observers, both statesmen decided — by seemingly unspoken Read more at Stephen Laniel’s Unspecified Bunker
→ The New Yorker on the Leahy-Cheney spat.
Excerpt: Via Crooked Timber: The New Yorker has a hilarious piece on Vice President Cheney’s recent suggestion that Vermont Senator Pat Leahy intercourse himself: At this point, according to observers, both statesmen decided — by seemingly unspoken Read more at Stephen Laniel’s Unspecified Bunker

This discussion has been closed. Thanks to everyone who contributed.