Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) was right when he responded to Vice President Dick Cheney's Nov. 16 attack against critics of the White House's handling of pre-war intelligence by saying, “it is hard to name a government official with less credibility on Iraq” than Cheney.
Kerry may speak for the 57 percent of Americans who believe that Bush "deliberately misled" the nation when making the case for war. But it's easy for the conservative noise machine to marginalize Kerry — perhaps by calling him French or making fun of his wife's riches.
Far more people, no doubt, will remember the brilliant commentary about Cheney's attack delivered last night by Jon Stewart and the writers at Comedy Central's The Daily Show.
Cheney, in his talk before the Frontiers of Freedom Institute, a conservative policy group, said of White House critics: "We're not going to sit by and let them rewrite history. ... We're going to continue throwing their own words back at them."
That bit of empty conservative spin was just too big a bullseye for The Daily Show writers to ignore.
Here's an unofficial transcript of what Stewart said:
STEWART: The Vice President, Dick Cheney, emerged from his bunker yesterday in a fight mood.
CHENEY: The suggestion that's been made by some US Senators, that the President of the United States or any member of this administration, purposely misled the American people in pre-war intelligence, is one of the most dishonest and reprehensible charges ever aired in this city.
...
STEWART: So, if the president and the vice president didn't intentionally mislead us, then our intelligence apparatus failed entirely. I guess, Vice President Cheney, that's the saddest part of this whole thing.
CHENEY: The saddest part is that our people in uniform have been subjected to these cynical and pernicious falsehoods, day in and day out.
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Article comments
1 - gonzo marx
heh..saw it last night, nailed to the Tree of Woe!!
thanks fer sharing...
it was all over Hardball last night as well, they showed many conflicting clips from Cheney
last week on a sunday morning show he denied ever using the phrase "in fact" or "we now know"...Matthews then proceeded to show 5 clips of him using those exact words in 2002/03
fun stuff
Excelsior!
2 - volt
i figured out there strategy! it was always obvious that bush/cheney policies had us on a direct path to the dark ages. but i never understood why until recently. the answer, undoubtedly, is that they desired a return to a place that predated audio and video recording machinery. it's the only way to make sense of their utterly ridiculous quotes and revisionist history which are so easily shot down. would it surprise anyone if tomorrow cheney stated in that barely audible voice of is, "I'm sorry Chris, uh, you are mistaken. You see, there is no war in Iraq. That has always been leftist propaganda perpetrated by the liberal main stream media." calling him dick does not do him justice.
3 - Al Barger
Pinkos are grasping at straws to have canonized Jon Stewart as a leading critic. He's not the tenth part as clever as he's made out to be, and that is merely clever, in the least sense of it.
This that you're quoting is absolutely nothing. It's not funny. The liberal troops choose to make laughy real loud, and insist that this Stewart is brilliant satire. It's crap.
Oh look, they said "Jackass" Wow, that's stickin' it to the man!
4 - gonzo marx
big Al sez...
*Pinkos are grasping at straws *
and yer humble Narrator replies....
fascist greedheads are bumbling around trying to revise Facts to suit their perverted cover their own ass while stuffing their pockets Agenda...
see ya in '06
Excelsior!
5 - RogerMDillon
He's more than clever than you. How many hit shows and best-selling books have you been involved with?
The transcript doesn't do the jacka$$/jackpot joke justice because it was a visual that had Chaney clips playing on a giant slot machine.
Go back to defending people on your side of the aisle who break the law.
6 - david r. mark
and insist that this Stewart is brilliant satire. It's crap.
I find it hard to take this seriously. I mean, is it brilliant satire for Rush Limbaugh to call feminists "feminazis," or to suggest that Hillary Clinton puts her pants on like any other "man"? Was it funny when Zell Miller lied to the American people about John Kerry's Senate voting record, joking that a President Kerry would arm his troops with "spitballs"?
Was it funny when Fox News Chief Political Correspondent Carl Cameron posted a fake story on the Fox News web site quoting Kerry talking about his cuticles? Or when Dennis Miller implied on the campaign trail that Kerry and John Edwards might be gay?
When former Bush Education Secretary Rod Paige called the National Education Association a "terrorist organization" a year ago, people took him seriously. A day later, he told the Associated Press: "I was making what I now know was a bad joke; it was a poor choice of words." On his radio show, Michael Savage sounds serious enough when he calls Muslims "bomb-tossers," but in interviews after the fact suggests this is an example of his "wit."
And then there's that queen of humor, Ann Coulter.
In Time magazine's flattering April 25 cover story on the conservative pundit, reporter John Cloud makes several similar points about Coulter:
-- "Coulter's speech was part right-wing stand-up routine."
-- Quoting her friend, Miguel Estrada, saying: "Most of the time, people miss her humor and satire and take her way too literally."
-- "[I]n person, Coulter is more likely to offer jokes than fury."
When Cloud provides the excuse that Coulter should not be taken so seriously by liberals, it opens the door for questioning everything she says. Since she doesn't preface comments by announcing them as humorous, what can we make of her outragous statements.
For example, was Coulter being funny when, in her book Slander, she wrote: "After Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wrote an opinion contrary to the clearly expressed position of the New York Times editorial page, the Times responded with an editorial on Thomas titled 'The Youngest, Cruelest Justice.' That was actually the headline on a lead editorial in the Newspaper of Record. Thomas is not engaged on the substance of his judicial philosophy. He is called 'a colored lawn jockey for conservative white interests,' 'race traitor,' 'black snake,' 'chicken-and-biscuit-eating Uncle Tom,' 'house Negro' and 'handkerchief head,' 'Benedict Arnold' and 'Judas Iscariot.'"
The paragraph makes it sound as though the New York Times was guilty of some horrible name-calling. But the Times never said any of those things. Was Coulter being funny?
***
Give Stewart credit. He doesn't have to lie in order to be "funny." I think you don't like his humor because it ruins your universe to think that someone can actually use the truth to reach the masses.
7 - Matthew T. Sussman
I watched that, and that episode was pretty good. That part was pretty heavy, though. Calling someone a jackass rarely elicits laughter for me.
Oh, and Colbert Report is here to stay.
8 - ss
Al,
South Park got stale years years ago.
Team America sucked from start to finish.
Stewart's on a downhill slide because he's been around for to long, but when he had Corell and Corbert he was at least as good as Matt and Trey at their best.
9 - Jon Sobel
I think you don't like his humor because it ruins your universe to think that someone can actually use the truth to reach the masses.
Brilliantly put! The Right Wing (as currently constituted) has never been about reaching the masses, only about pulling the wool over their eyes.
10 - Phillip Winn
I'm amazed at how thoroughly both Jon Stewart (who normally is hilarious) and most commenters here are missing the point. Cheney's statement was clearly intended to articulate the position that he and Bush and others within the Bush administration were under the same misapprehension that Saddam had WMDs that had been common in Washington and spoken by many people of both parties on a continual basis since before Bush even took office.
In other words, our intelligence apparatus did fail us completely, which is tragic. Stewart nailed it there, but then presented a single comment by Cheney from 2002, leaving out that Cheney was joined by a loud chorus of voices from both parties at the same time, earlier, and later.
All of them we now know to be untrue, but none of them we know to be deceptive, and none of them exclusive to one person or even one party.
I could go on in detail, but I'm just really disappointed to see Stewart stooping this low. He's better than this, he really is.
11 - david r. mark
Stewart offered three comments (as posted) from 2002, 2003 and 2005. None of the three Cheney comments have been proven true.
Stewart could have posted about 50 other Cheney comments just as easily. But better to leave his audience wanting more.
And sorry, Philip, the fact that a lot of people think something isn't an excuse. Bush and Cheney are the nation's LEADERS. The standard must be much higher. They must be certain that this is the best, and perhaps only course of action, before undertaking a pre-emptive war.
There is no doubt that there was information from the CIA, DIA, IAEA and UN that countered the urgent allegations being made by Bush and Cheney in 2002. The 2002 NIE doesn't agree with several of Bush and Cheney's comments. That's a real-time assessment -- not revisionist history.
12 - Matthew T. Sussman
To be fair, Stewart did roll the Clintonian "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" bit.
Or was that Colbert?
Doesn't matter. At this point it's an hour of the same show.
But I don't see the humor in showing a clip of something that was wrong and pointing and saying "haha it wasn't teh tr00 lol!!!1!1!oneone"
13 - Phillip Winn
David, Stewart could have run hours of comments from the 1990s through the invasion of Iraq by any number of people from either party who had exactly the same level of access to the same information as Cheney did, all of which turned out to be equally untrue when it came to Saddam and WMDs.
To pin this on Cheney, or the Bush administration, even, is remarkably selective, given that the exact same statement were made repeatedly by officials of the Clinton administration even before Bush took office.
And since I'm back here, I'll point out that "the saddest part" clearly means "the saddest part of this misrepresentation is that our soldiers in uniform hear it, not "the saddest part of our soldiers' lives is hearing this." The second reading is funny, but clearly not even remotely what Cheney meant.
14 - The Fifth Dentist
Yes, it was indeed hilarious. Cheney is a giant stain on the underpants of America.
15 - randy
I thought the Cheney bit from the other night was one of Stewart's golden moments. It is interesting watching, from outside the USA, the slow downward slide of the right, from outside the country, and how defensive the right is these days, as more and more people with functioning brains realize how badly they have been duped by their so-called leaders. Iraq? Oil, and no other reason.
16 - Natalie Davis
"Cheney is a giant stain on the underpants of America."
I want that on a T-shirt!
17 - Al Barger
Yeah, see that "underpants" thing isn't funny. There's no humor point or angle to it.
What it does reflect is just inflammed hatred. That you would find that entertaining doesn't mean that 5D has said something amusing, but simply that some are filled with hateful spite, and that they'd like to advertise that to the world on a T-shirt.
18 - Scott
I think calling people "Pinkos" might be inflammed hatred too, Al.
19 - gonzo marx
not funny?....no point?....no "angle"?
oh ye of little Imagination...
let me take a whack at It
..:::climbs up on his soapbox and does the Anchorite thing:::..
"mah fellow Amuricans, the Time has come for us to rise up and launder the greasy stain of GOP totalitarian tyranny from the soiled underwear of our Nation...
Time indeed for U.S. to staunch the ichor seeping like a festering pustule in the very Fabric of our Society...
Time indeed ro send the neocon/theocon oligarchal Elite from the sacred Halls of Power and straight to the Cleaners for a thourough Bleaching and a New pressing with double pleats so we may one more Dress with Pride in the Birthday Suit that is our Government...
Thank You...and strive onward..."
..::: gets off soapbox:::..
how's that?...
better?
Excelsior!
20 - Al Barger
Nah, "pinkos" is not inflammed hatred. It's merely dismissive. Also, I wouldn't expect the word to stand alone as the content of an argument. I would expect to have to explain whatever kind of pinko foolishness was at hand.
21 - Al Barger
Why yes, Gonzo, that's considerably better. It's not great, but it's at least slightly amusing, and actually looks like at least an attempt at humor rather than merely calling names.
22 - Sam Jack
He had me right up until 'Jackass'-- oh, actually it was 'Jacka$$'-- I thought that was a bit obvious.
Watching that bit, it didn't really strike me as one his 'finest moments', but funny nevertheless. It didn't really address Cheney's contention that the White House purposefully misled the American people. It did show the White House hypocrisy in attacking Democrats for opposing the war during the lead-up and initial salvos, and then later on attacking the Democrats, indirectly, for supporting the war.
23 - Scott Butki
That was a great bit Stewart did. I wouldn't call it brilliant or clever - it was basically just quoting Cheney showing himself to be as inept as ever - but it was still hilarious.
24 - Luis Dias
"The second reading is funny, but clearly not even remotely what Cheney meant."
And what the f*** matters what Cheney meant??!? Can't you see the guy's a lie encarnated? I mean, since iraq's theme appeared on the shore, I defy you to name a single truth in his speeches. He's a liar, or alternatively, incredibly naive and stupid always getting the reality wrong, and so is Bush admin in general. And they are leading US!!! Looks like a nightmare one should wake up from. Badly!
So YES, Cheney IS a Jacka$$, and even THAT is an understatement, which in fact, is exactly what makes it ultimately funny.