I was hunting at a friend's ranch in Texas the other day when a funny thing happened. While engaged in shooting quail, I accidentally shot...two gay cowboys in the midst of furtively expressing their forbidden love. I know it wasn't my fault, so I don't feel there is any reason to show remorse, or to let my adoring public know about the events that transpired (besides issuing this brief statement explaining my lack of culpability, of course).
Apparent hate crimes aside, while that whole debacle was going on, just around the ol' bend, Vice President Dick Cheney was involved in his own unfortunate shooting mishap. By now you must have heard the news of Cheney accidentally shooting--or "peppering," as us blood-lusting, trying-to-compensate-for-sexual-inadequacies-by-firing-guns hunters call it--a member of his shooting party last Saturday. We call it peppering because it spices things up. No self-respecting huntsman should be without at least a few pellets permanently lodged in their bosoms. Gripped by the thrill of the hunt, Cheney apparently did not hear the victim, Texas lawyer and Republican stalwart Harry Whittington, coming up from behind as he swiftly turned and shot. Maybe Cheney's much-honed practice of ignoring and disregarding journalists and critics carried over to his hunting approach, reinforcing the common adage that work and pleasure shouldn't mix. That must explain why he didn't bother to inform the public until almost a day later. After all, the Veep sure does take pleasure out of hunting. During a hunting trip in Pennsylvania in 2003, Cheney and his 10-person party killed 417 out of the 500 pen-grown, farm-raised birds specifically released for his hunt, with the Vice President felling an impressive total of over 70. While it's unclear whether this latest romp consisted of shooting creatures specifically bred to be killed and provided by the exclusively private Armstrong Ranch, other notable murderers of domesticated animals include quality human beings like Jeffery Dahmer, Ted Bundy and Clyde Barrow (from Bonnie and Clyde infamy), all of whom have obviously been snubbed for years by the Mother Teresa-loving losers on the Nobel Peace Prize committee.
While it may seem barbaric to some, Cheney's preoccupation with hunting is pretty boring compared with some of the world leaders and dictators featured on Crazy Fetishes and Stupid Doings of the Powerful and Despotic (Robin Leech's newest hit TV program).
Everyone knows about North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and his preoccupation with nuclear proliferation and civil rights abuse. Most aren't aware, however, that the diminutive, bouffant-sporting Axis of Evil member is quite the film buff. Kim reportedly has an enviable collection of over 20,000 movies, the majority of which might just be romantic comedies (I heard he cries every time he watches "The Wedding Planner"). Kim even took his obsession a step further when in 1978 he tried to push the North Korean film industry past the antiquated institution that is Hollywood by kidnapping a popular South Korean film director and his wife and forcing them to make movies for the good of the North Korean community until their escape in 1986. One such classic was "Pulgasari," a story about a giant iron-eating lizard who fights to free peasants from the tyrannical rulers under which they suffer. Hmm, that sounds like that had an agenda beyond butchering "Godzilla" to me, with that whole communist undertone thing, but being of Russian descent I tend to think that everything is propaganda. So what's so wrong about drinking Hennessey X.O. (Kim's favorite drink), eating with silver chopsticks and spending millions of dollars on mind-numbing copies of Western movies while your population suffers?
On the other side of the Axis of Evil lies Libyan ruler Muammar Qaddafi and his proto-feminist tendencies. Sure, he might have heavily funded the "Black September" terrorists who were responsible for the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre and committed a host of other capital-punishment worthy offenses, but how can you dislike a guy who surrounds himself with an elite fighting squad of 40 female bodyguards? He personally selects the highly trained killing squad and requires that they keep their virginity intact (don't want them getting all soft and mushy, now). Qaddafi is the Gloria Steinem of the Middle East, and it's about time he gets some recognition for it.
No one, however, can top the craziest of them all, Saparmurat Niyazov, the dictator of Turkmenistan. Since gaining power in 1985, Niyazov has whimsically transformed his country into his own dream world. Some of his accomplishments are truly great, almost Churchill-esque: instituting a self-written, fictional epic as the primary learning text in all schools; banning lip syncing during public performance; banning newscasters from wearing make-up, because he had trouble telling the men and women apart; building a giant, golden statue of himself, which rotates to follow the sun; and renaming all the months of the year, including January, which is now "Turkmenbashi," or father of the Turkmens, as he goes by nowadays.
So go ahead and chastise Cheney if you want, but I'll be more objective. I'll wait until we all celebrate Thanksgiving in Halliburtonary.
