One I Missed

In doing my overview of how various blogs treated the fifth year anniversary, I missed one of the best. It comes from a non-political blog, which is perhaps why I overlooked it that day. It is smart, funny, moving, and oh, so true.

From Liam McEneaney:

HAPPY SEPTEMBER 11TH EVERYBODY!

I was watching Meet the Press Sunday morning, and Tim Russert was interviewing Dick Cheney, and to give Russert full credit, he was not letting Cheney slide. In fact, Russert might be the only person in the press who I've seen interview Bush and Cheney and not give them softballs or easy questions. And I think that the reason he can get away with it is that the core constituency that Bush and Cheney should be afraid to alienate are not spending their Sunday mornings watching Meet the Press.

I have to say that watching Cheney cemented exactly the thing I admire most about him. I'd tried to figure it out for years, and it became crystal clear: He is not afraid to be what he is; an openly evil puppetmaster pulling the strings. I used to watch Disney cartoons, wondering why no one suspected the main villain was up to no good, what with their wearing dark capes, laughing maniacally at the slightest provocation, and singing songs about how much better life would be once the hero was dead and the world was under their thumb.

In fact, if I was going to make a movie about a bent, twisted villain super-genius bent on world conquest, I would cast Cheney in a heartbeat. You know, like the kind of man who shoots his friend in the face and gets the victim to issue a public apology for embarrassing him. The kind of man who could watch the biggest terrorist attack on US soil in history, and immediately start the wheels spinning, figuring how to turn that into an excuse to attack Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with it.

And the fact that he makes no bones about who he is is the masterstroke. If he had any kind of positive charisma, he would be the most dangerous man in America, if not the world. Instead, he's a cantankerous, contemptuous cesspit of sarcasm and bilious spittle who can go on a show like Meet the Press and be confronted with his lies, and not only show no remorse, but lie about the fact that he had lied, denying it with the fervor of a six year-old, with his hand in the cookie jar, denying that he was trying to eat a cookie.

At one point, Russert showed videotape of Cheney lying which Cheney had just lied about not having done, and Cheney immediately started adding a third lie to the mix about how the first two lies were invalid.

Cheney's at the point where I would immediately suspect him, even if he said something I wholeheartedly agreed with. If Dick Cheney went on national television and said, "The President and I are firmly against baby-eating," my first thought would be, "What's he hiding on the baby-eating issue? Do babies really taste like chocolate? Are they an alternative energy source?"

Sorry, I really try to keep politics off of this blog, but I've been surprised at how depressed I've been this whole weekend leading up to the fifth anniversary of September 11th, and to see this smug arrogant piece of left-over Nixon White House garbage telling me that his underlings hadn't spent a lot of time linking Saddam hussein to the falling of the World Trade Center makes me as sick as their use of the September 11th tragedy as political currency in the first place.

It's like the murderer who uses his lousy childhood as an excuse for his crimes. Ugh. Sometimes I expect Cheney to turn into a bat and scream, "SO LONG FOOLS! NOW I SHALL FEED ON THE BLOOD OF VIRGINS!" as he flaps off into the sunrise.

My point is, if you disagree with me, good. Please persuade me that I live in a world where the Bush administration's actions over the last five years are rational, well-reasoned, and ethical. That thousands of young Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis didn't die in vain. That global warming is a myth, that the economy is rebounding, that the evidence of my senses are completely wrong.

In other words, I need to get laid. Okay, I get it.