![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the cheney f-bomb
Jun. 29th, 2004 12:59 am***Note: the following is mostly first-draft spew, written under the influence of fatigue and without the constraint of extensive research. Don't expect much.***
The Vice-President of the United States has done something so foul, so criminal, so reprehensible that I, a courageous member of the press, am shocked to report it.
Yes, he has used a naughty word in public. And not just any word -- THE word, the one that the kid in "A Christmas Story" got his mouth washed out for that wasn't "fudge." And what's more, he said it to someone, not just because he banged his thumb with a hammer or something.
While on the senate floor, immediately after a session of official Senate business, while accting in his capacity as president of the Senate, the Vice-President advised a senator to fornicate with himself -- a category of action that might take many forms, each requiring more athleticism and flexibility than the last. I can even think of ways in which one could, theoretically, violate oneself if one could remove one's appendages.
But because Mr. Cheney issued a direction, we can assume that he intended Patrick Leahy to have sex with an easily reachable part of his own body -- his hand, say.
This is problematic. Wouldn't the Bush administration, of which Cheney is the second highest-ranking member, outlaw the teaching of masturbation in public schools if it had the chance? Given that the Christian religious see onanism as a horrible, terrible sin causing corruption, damnation and odd patterns of furriness, wouldn't it stand to reason that the administration probably secretly wishes it could regulate the act itself -- that it wishes to outlaw jerking off? I think so. Then how can such a senior representative of our country's government, in such a hallowed place as the Senate, encourage a colleague -- who is old enough to know better and to have mastered temptations of the flesh -- to defile himself thus?
The location and the occasion compound the inexplicable instruction. The Senate is the official gathering place in which the higher of the nation's two legislative bodies enacts the laws to which we are all bound. This is surely one of America's most serious rooms, whose history and importance ought to be respected. And the occasion was a petty fight -- the injured party had taken exception to the vice-president's ex-employer's business dealings, as I understand it, and Cheney took it personally. He encouraged the senator to sacrifice his immortal soul in a moment of injured pride -- the possession of which is, itself, one of the gravest sins known to Christians worldwide.
Sadly, this is not the first time this year that that word, among other public mentions of sexuality, have garnered news attention.
In January, the mammary gland of Janet Jackson was briefly displayed during the grunting testosterone-fest that is the Super Bowl. It was quickly covered up, and was mostly disguised with jewelry even during the short time that it was shown to the world. The public reacted with outrage, and the Federal Communications Commission reacted by multiplying by several times the penalty for broadcasting too-explicit sexual content -- visual or verbal, in pictures or words. Now, certain media outlets might go out of business if hit with just one fine -- and, given tighter rules for enforcement, opportunities to attract such fines suddenly became more numerous.
But such are the requirements if we wish to live in a decent society. Some toes must be trampled on, but they're all profane, godless toes anyway.
So it was when Sandra Tsing Loh, a Los Angeles writer and artist, was fired from a Santa Monica radio station taht regularly broadcast her essays. On the air, she read the dreaded F-word -- and the broadcast was repeated. It was actually the editor's fault, to hear Loh tell it; she had left specific instructions to "bleep" the offending syllable, and he didn't do it, and it didn't even get "bleeped" after it had gone out over the air once (surely someone heard it the first time and told a production director!). So she was sacked.
But, the vulgarity of her language aside, in that moment she was actually conforming, if indiscreetly, to the administration's agenda in re: sex -- she was referring to coital relations with her husband, to whom she is wedded in the Bush-sanctioned and -approved institution of holy matrimony. Isn't that what the administration wishes our kids to learn -- that sex belongs in the marriage bed?
So she said something much less controversial, and tried to make sure the actual word got stifled -- even though everyone listening would have known anyway exactly what she said. And the place she said it was much less shocking than Cheney's -- yes, anyone with a tuner tuned to the right frequency can pick up public radio, but the Senate floor is quite a different place from the station on which one picks up funk music on a Friday-night drive to a nightclub. More respectable, maybe; certainly more serious and more historically weighty.
Loh eventually got offered her slot back (she declined it). But not only did the spiteful Cheney not hang his head and hang up his flag pin in shame, he had the gall to continue as if it were business as usual, and the letter-writers to a Fox News talk-show appeared (I was at the gym; I could only read screen graphics and subtitles) to largely not care. Some even thought it was refreshing, for "not acting like other politicians." Count among them Orrin Hatch, himself a senator.
If Loh lost her job and placed her station at risk of a big fine for using the F-word to describe her perfectly acceptable sexual habits with her husband, shouldn't Cheney's encouraging of a U.S. senator to abuse himself, and thereby give up his place in the Kingdon of Heaven, lose Cheney his job and place the administration at risk of a fine commensurate with the seriousness of the offense?
I'm serious, people. If Cheney gets a pass, indecency rules and enforcement should be at least scaled back to pre-Super Bowl levels. On the other hand, if a comedy writer can have the law (and her employer's fear of the law) brought down on her head for it, Cheney should get shitcanned.
Pardon my French.
The Vice-President of the United States has done something so foul, so criminal, so reprehensible that I, a courageous member of the press, am shocked to report it.
Yes, he has used a naughty word in public. And not just any word -- THE word, the one that the kid in "A Christmas Story" got his mouth washed out for that wasn't "fudge." And what's more, he said it to someone, not just because he banged his thumb with a hammer or something.
While on the senate floor, immediately after a session of official Senate business, while accting in his capacity as president of the Senate, the Vice-President advised a senator to fornicate with himself -- a category of action that might take many forms, each requiring more athleticism and flexibility than the last. I can even think of ways in which one could, theoretically, violate oneself if one could remove one's appendages.
But because Mr. Cheney issued a direction, we can assume that he intended Patrick Leahy to have sex with an easily reachable part of his own body -- his hand, say.
This is problematic. Wouldn't the Bush administration, of which Cheney is the second highest-ranking member, outlaw the teaching of masturbation in public schools if it had the chance? Given that the Christian religious see onanism as a horrible, terrible sin causing corruption, damnation and odd patterns of furriness, wouldn't it stand to reason that the administration probably secretly wishes it could regulate the act itself -- that it wishes to outlaw jerking off? I think so. Then how can such a senior representative of our country's government, in such a hallowed place as the Senate, encourage a colleague -- who is old enough to know better and to have mastered temptations of the flesh -- to defile himself thus?
The location and the occasion compound the inexplicable instruction. The Senate is the official gathering place in which the higher of the nation's two legislative bodies enacts the laws to which we are all bound. This is surely one of America's most serious rooms, whose history and importance ought to be respected. And the occasion was a petty fight -- the injured party had taken exception to the vice-president's ex-employer's business dealings, as I understand it, and Cheney took it personally. He encouraged the senator to sacrifice his immortal soul in a moment of injured pride -- the possession of which is, itself, one of the gravest sins known to Christians worldwide.
Sadly, this is not the first time this year that that word, among other public mentions of sexuality, have garnered news attention.
In January, the mammary gland of Janet Jackson was briefly displayed during the grunting testosterone-fest that is the Super Bowl. It was quickly covered up, and was mostly disguised with jewelry even during the short time that it was shown to the world. The public reacted with outrage, and the Federal Communications Commission reacted by multiplying by several times the penalty for broadcasting too-explicit sexual content -- visual or verbal, in pictures or words. Now, certain media outlets might go out of business if hit with just one fine -- and, given tighter rules for enforcement, opportunities to attract such fines suddenly became more numerous.
But such are the requirements if we wish to live in a decent society. Some toes must be trampled on, but they're all profane, godless toes anyway.
So it was when Sandra Tsing Loh, a Los Angeles writer and artist, was fired from a Santa Monica radio station taht regularly broadcast her essays. On the air, she read the dreaded F-word -- and the broadcast was repeated. It was actually the editor's fault, to hear Loh tell it; she had left specific instructions to "bleep" the offending syllable, and he didn't do it, and it didn't even get "bleeped" after it had gone out over the air once (surely someone heard it the first time and told a production director!). So she was sacked.
But, the vulgarity of her language aside, in that moment she was actually conforming, if indiscreetly, to the administration's agenda in re: sex -- she was referring to coital relations with her husband, to whom she is wedded in the Bush-sanctioned and -approved institution of holy matrimony. Isn't that what the administration wishes our kids to learn -- that sex belongs in the marriage bed?
So she said something much less controversial, and tried to make sure the actual word got stifled -- even though everyone listening would have known anyway exactly what she said. And the place she said it was much less shocking than Cheney's -- yes, anyone with a tuner tuned to the right frequency can pick up public radio, but the Senate floor is quite a different place from the station on which one picks up funk music on a Friday-night drive to a nightclub. More respectable, maybe; certainly more serious and more historically weighty.
Loh eventually got offered her slot back (she declined it). But not only did the spiteful Cheney not hang his head and hang up his flag pin in shame, he had the gall to continue as if it were business as usual, and the letter-writers to a Fox News talk-show appeared (I was at the gym; I could only read screen graphics and subtitles) to largely not care. Some even thought it was refreshing, for "not acting like other politicians." Count among them Orrin Hatch, himself a senator.
If Loh lost her job and placed her station at risk of a big fine for using the F-word to describe her perfectly acceptable sexual habits with her husband, shouldn't Cheney's encouraging of a U.S. senator to abuse himself, and thereby give up his place in the Kingdon of Heaven, lose Cheney his job and place the administration at risk of a fine commensurate with the seriousness of the offense?
I'm serious, people. If Cheney gets a pass, indecency rules and enforcement should be at least scaled back to pre-Super Bowl levels. On the other hand, if a comedy writer can have the law (and her employer's fear of the law) brought down on her head for it, Cheney should get shitcanned.
Pardon my French.
