"I Think I Got 'Em Harry!"

So our Vice-President had a little mishap and shot a 78 year-old man. In the face.

Wow. This is fodder for so much comedy. I do not forsee "our Vice-President shot a man in the face" jokes getting unfunny any time soon. Unless the guy dies, but that does not seem likely. So, here are some of the good gunslinging VP jokes I've seen/heard during the last few days. Let's all take a minute to a month or so to laugh at our VP.

(The first bit from the Daily Show has also been posted by both Charlie and Eric, because it is that funny.)

From "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart"

Jon Stewart: "I'm joined now by our own vice-presidential firearms mishap analyst, Rob Corddry. Rob, obviously a very unfortunate situation. How is the vice president handling it?

Rob Corddry: "Jon, tonight the vice president is standing by his decision to shoot Harry Wittington. According to the best intelligence available, there were quail hidden in the brush. Everyone believed at the time there were quail in the brush.

"And while the quail turned out to be a 78-year-old man, even knowing that today, Mr. Cheney insists he still would have shot Mr. Whittington in the face. He believes the world is a better place for his spreading buckshot throughout the entire region of Mr. Whittington's face."

Jon Stewart: "But why, Rob? If he had known Mr. Whittington was not a bird, why would he still have shot him?"

Rob Corddry: "Jon, in a post-9-11 world, the American people expect their leaders to be decisive. To not have shot his friend in the face would have sent a message to the quail that America is weak."

Jon Stewart: "That's horrible."

Rob Corddry: "Look, the mere fact that we're even talking about how the vice president drives up with his rich friends in cars to shoot farm-raised wingless quail-tards is letting the quail know 'how' we're hunting them. I'm sure right now those birds are laughing at us in that little 'covey' of theirs.

Jon Stewart: "I'm not sure birds can laugh, Rob."

Rob Corddry: "Well, whatever it is they do … coo .. they're cooing at us right now, Jon, because here we are talking openly about our plans to hunt them. Jig is up. Quails one, America zero.

Jon Stewart: "Okay, well, on a purely human level, is the vice president at least sorry?"

Rob Corddry: "Jon, what difference does it make? The bullets are already in this man's face. Let's move forward across party lines as a people … to get him some sort of mask."

* * *
Jon Stewart: "Yes, as you've just heard, a near-tragedy over the weekend in south Texas. Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot a man during a quail hunt at a political supporter's ranch. Making 78-year-old Harry Whittington the first person shot by a sitting VP since Alexander Hamilton.

"Hamilton, of course, shot in a duel with Aaron Burr over issues of honor, integrity and political maneuvering. Whittington? Mistaken for a bird.

* * *
The other player in the drama? Ranch owner and eyewitness Katharine Armstrong.

Katharine Armstrong: "We were shooting a covey of quail. The vice president and two others got out of the car to walk up the covey."

Jon Stewart: "What kind of hunting story begins with getting out of your car? As I sighted the great beast before us, my shaking hands could barely engage the parking brake. Slowly, I turned off the A/C and silenced my sub-woofers…"

* * *
Katharine Armstrong: "A bird flushed. The vice president took aim at the bird and shot and unfortunately, Mr. Whittington was in the line of fire and got peppered pretty well."

Jon Stewart: "Peppered. There you have it. Harry Whittington, seasoned to within an inch of his life.

* * *
Letterman: "Good news ladies and gentleman, we have finally located weapons of mass destruction … It's Dick Cheney."

* * *
"We can't get Bin Laden, but we nailed a 78-year-old attorney."

* * *
"The guy who got gunned down is a Republican lawyer and a big Republican donor and fortunately the buck shot was deflected by wads of laundered cash. So he's fine. He took a little in the wallet."

* * *
From "Cheney's Excuses," Monday night's Top 10 list on Letterman: "I thought the guy was trying to go gay cowboy on me."

* * *
Jimmy Kimmel: "It's part of the president's new Social Security plan. Once you hit 78, kablamo."

* * *
"Luckily, the guy he shot was wearing the body armor that never got shipped to the troops."

* * *
Leno: "Although it is beautiful here in California, the weather back East has been atrocious. There was so much snow in Washington, D.C. Dick Cheney accidentally shot a fat guy thinking it was a polar bear."

* * *
"When people found out he shot a lawyer his popularity is now at 92%"

* * *
"After he shot the guy, he screamed, 'Anyone else want to call domestic wire tapping illegal?' "

* * *
"Something I just found out today about the incident. Do you know that Dick Cheney tortured the guy for a half hour before he shot him?"

Some Wilde Quotes

I would like to thank my friend Jarrod Taylor for suggesting that I begin to read Oscar Wilde. I have only skimmed a compilation of what Oxford considers to be his greatest works and done a short online search, but have already come across a number of great quotes, a testament to his genius. Anyone who has coined as many catch phrases and what have become almost cliches has some serious business going on upstairs. Here are a handful of my favorites so far. If you have some others, let me know. I'm all over this kind of junk.

"Behind joy and laughter there may be a temperament, coarse, hard, and callous. But behind sorrow there is always sorrow. Pain, unlike pleasure, wears no mask.."

"...sorrow is the most sensitive of all created things...It
is a wound that bleeds when any hand but that of love touches it,
and even then must bleed again, though not in pain."

"Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not the sitter."

"Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace."

"...every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and...therefore what one has done in the secret chamber one has some day
to cry aloud on the housetop."

"America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between."

"Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months."

"Genius is born--not paid."

"Biography lends to death a new terror."

"Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event."
(Italics mine.)

"We're all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."