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Post by Gorf on Jun 25, 2004 1:18:15 GMT -5
www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5289848/WASHINGTON - Vice President Cheney cursed at Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy during a confrontation on the Senate floor while members were having their annual group picture taken earlier this week, Leahy and Senate sources said Thursday. The incident occurred on Tuesday in a terse discussion between the two that touched on politics, religion and money, Senate aides with knowledge of the encounter said. According to aides, Leahy said hello to Cheney following the taking of the Senate group photo on the floor of the chamber. Cheney, who as vice president is president of the Senate, then ripped into Leahy for the Democratic senator’s criticism this week of alleged war profiteering in Iraq by Halliburton, the oil services company that Cheney once ran. Leahy and other Democrats have called for congressional hearings into whether the vice president helped the firm win lucrative contracts in Iraq after the U.S.-led war that toppled Saddam Hussein. During their exchange, Leahy noted that Republicans had accused Democrats of being anti-Catholic because they are opposed to some of President Bush’s anti-abortion judges, the aides said. Cheney then responded, “f--- off” or “f--- you,” two aides said, both speaking on condition of anonymity. Leahy, D-Vt., confirmed that the confrontation took place but would not provide details. “I think he was just having a bad day,” Leahy said. “I was kind of shocked to hear that kind of language on the floor.”<br> Cheney’s office also wouldn’t go into detail, but confirmed the two men traded remarks. “That doesn’t sound like language that the vice president would use, but there was a frank exchange of views,” said Kevin Kellems, a spokesman for Cheney. According to Senate rules, profanity is not permitted in the chamber. But when the exchange occurred between Leahy and Cheney, the Senate was not in session, so there was technically no foul.
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Post by IdahoBoy on Jun 25, 2004 14:27:30 GMT -5
>-(Gorf)-<[} link=board=news&thread=1088144295&start=0#0 date=1088144295]According to Senate rules, profanity is not permitted in the chamber. But when the exchange occurred between Leahy and Cheney, the Senate was not in session, so there was technically no foul. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiight... so when the building isn't being used, it isn't there? No wonder our politicians have such a hard time getting anything done... they can't find the "chamber" to get it into session! |
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vbfan
Sophomore
Posts: 221 
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Post by vbfan on Jun 25, 2004 21:05:40 GMT -5
This reminds me of the moment during the 2000 campaign when Bush was unaware that the microphone was on and called a reporter in the audience "a major league ***hole".
I have got to say that Bush is the first President I really dislike on a personal level. I may not have always agreed with Reagan or Bush Sr., but I always thought they were honorable people. I just think W is just plain corrupt.
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Post by Barefoot In Kailua on Jun 25, 2004 21:08:33 GMT -5
>-(Gorf)-<[} link=board=news&thread=1088144295&start=0#0 date=1088144295]Cheney then responded, “f--- off” or “f--- you,” two aides said, both speaking on condition of anonymity. Way to tell em Dickie.  |
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Post by Gorf on Jul 8, 2004 12:20:19 GMT -5
By Anna Quindlen
Newsweek July 12 issue -
In 1962, when the New York Times quoted President John F. Kennedy during a dispute with the steel industry as saying, "My father always told me that all businessmen were sons of bitches, but I never believed it till now," the White House went ballistic. The press office complained, the publisher of the Times apologized and the AP noted that other newspapers had found the quote unfit to print.
That was then. This is @#*!%.
Or the F word. Or expletive deleted. Or what have you: the powers of expurgated invention fail me. What does it mean that today it means nothing when the vice president unrepentantly uses a word in public that this magazine won't use in print? It means that standards have changed since 1962. Not just standards of obscenity—standards of masculinity.
Dick Cheney's decision to advise Sen. Patrick Leahy to perform an anatomically impossible sex act (thereby creating a journalistically impossible quotation situation) has been discussed in terms of the rise of the potty mouth. After all, the F word is still considered so beyond the pale that when Bono used it at the Golden Globes, the chair of the FCC called it "abhorrent," and when John Kerry paired it with "up" to describe Iraq policy in a interview, the president's chief of staff described himself as "disappointed."
The Cheney flap triggers the hypocrisy meter, since neither of those (Republican) officials has described the vice president's language as abhorrent or disappointing. And it raises the trickle-down question, too. If the vice president of the country feels comfortable—nay, exultant—about using the word on the Senate floor, can the vice president of the student council be far behind? I can't wait for the principal's reaction the first time a smart teenager offers the Cheney defense verbatim:
"He had challenged my integrity. And I didn't like that. But most of all I didn't like the fact that after he had done so, then he wanted to act like everything's peaches and cream. And I informed him of my view of his conduct in no uncertain terms. And, as I say, I felt better afterwards."
But the most enduring lesson of this event has more to do with what passes for a guy than what passes for a role model. Slinging obscenities has always been the verbal equivalent of towel snapping; cursing the senator, who has harped on Cheney's connection to defense contractor Halliburton and its connection to lucrative contracts in Iraq, was the closest the vice president could come to throwing a punch. It wasn't the first time the administration gloried in being faux hard core; it was to Cheney that George W. Bush made the comment that a New York Times reporter was, to stick with euphemisms, a major-league sphincter, and it was the vice president who responded jovially, "Big time."
To appreciate just how much of this is macho, consider what the response would have been had Sen. Hillary Clinton used the same word the vice president (or Senator Kerry) did. Or look at an exchange on CNN about the Cheney remark. Tucker Carlson accuses Paul Begala of being "angry, like a little girl." Begala says Cheney is "a baby—he needs a diaper." Whoa. Testosterone alert, big time.
One interesting aspect of this presidential race is that by traditional standards, Kerry has the masculinity factor sewn up; an inveterate jock and a war hero trumps a former cheerleader and a stay-at-home guardsman. But in recent years the Republican hard guys have taken over the Y-chromosome territory from the feel-your-pain Democrats, and Bush's persona—the reformed party animal, the laconic rancher, the anti-intellectual C student—dovetails perfectly with the Zeitgeist of the new GOP. When he said that he wanted Osama bin Laden dead or alive, it was a John Wayne moment.
The vice president is not a cowboy-boots kind of character, and a public spat between two bald guys in glasses is more faculty lounge than O.K. Corral. It takes one of them unleashing the F word to give a street spin to the hissy fit, to show that he won't take any you-know-what from the sphincters who make his life hell. (Thank God—finally a profanity I can use.) This is supposed to tell the world that he's a real man.
Macho posturing has always been part of politics; it's one reason women have found it hard to break into the business. But what constitutes male is in the eye, or the ear, of the beholder. Kennedy obviously thought being seen as crude would lessen his stature. But in the current climate, being seen as too polite or too sensitive is considered weak. Frat-boy locutions are the equivalent of biceps tattoos for the suit-and-tie crowd.
This is not particularly useful in elevating the tone in Washington, or in trying to show kids that the reflexive use of certain words is the last refuge of those who are neither intelligent nor thoughtful enough to plumb a more varied vocabulary. It brings out the worst in everyone; I'm personally tempted to advise the vice president to—aw, never mind. That's a guy thing. Besides, the bosses here set a higher official standard than the ones at the White House do.
© 2004 Newsweek, Inc.
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Post by vierra on Jul 8, 2004 12:30:02 GMT -5
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiight... so when the building isn't being used, it isn't there? No wonder our politicians have such a hard time getting anything done... they can't find the "chamber" to get it into session! Think of it this way, Idadork, when USC pounded Hawaii in March 2003, it didn't count in the standings because it was off-season. When USC pounded Hawaii in late August 2003 in the NACWAA, that counted in the standings because it was in-season. Both matches, one that didn't count and one that did, occurred in the same building, the SSC. |
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Post by Gorf on Jul 9, 2004 8:57:29 GMT -5
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