dick cheney

Okay, so Condoleezza Rice went to Rome for a meeting about the Lebanon situation. It didn't go so well. Jon showed a Condimeter graphic to illustrate just how bad it was (TDS has been really graphic-happy lately). Of course, the meeting wasn't as great as "Three days alone at Camp David with the President" or "Christmas morning"... It ended up somewhere between "Kofi Annan cops a feel" and "Bin Laden determined to attack WHERE?!". I have a feeling I may have switched up a few of those details, so apologies ahead of time. I swear TDS knows I'm scrambling to type this all down. They probably have a hidden camera on my monitor, broadcasting live right into Jon's office so that they can giggle at my panic.

Jon started off with some coverage of weatherpeople on local news, specifically those from Terre Haute, Indiana's WTWO. They showed a couple of funny clips of WTWO bragging about their 45 years of combined weather experience, totally PWNing rival channel WTHI's puny 30 years. "Man! I bet they can't tell snow from dingleberries!"

Mexico's Vincent Fox is planning for the legalization of several drugs in small amounts for personal use. Yup, this will include cocaine, heroine, and marijuana (craziest Spring Break ever). Jon was kind enough to warn us to drink only the bottled bong water in Mexico. He also showed us that the legalization will serve very well with our immigration issue: Mexicans will keep flocking to America for jobs, Americans will flock to Mexico to get hammered and fall into the Gulf. Excellent.

Jon Stewart went surfing on the web and stumbled across a list of Dick Cheney's suite demands on The Smoking Gun. It's a lot like a rock band's performance contract but with "fewer condoms and more... defibrillators". Such demands include the temperature stay at 68 degrees (assuming that is the temperature at which reptiles are most comfortable), all lights have to be turned on (we will save no electricity when the Vice President is here!), and -- get this -- all televisions have to be tuned into FOX News ("Wow! Because God forbid he walks into a hotel room and the TV is on another channel and he finds out what a shitty job he's been doing!"). Oh, and Jon revealed that scribbled at the bottom of the typed list was "rifle, ammo, old man's face". Hmm... That could mean anything.

When Jon mentioned that the night's guest was going to be Natalie Portman, the audience seemed really excited. She was here to promote her new movie, V for Vendetta, which, as Jon noted, is rarely seen in children's books. "V is for Vendetta! Billy carried out a 'vendetta' against all those that he thought had wronged him!"...  "V is for Vagina" is also surprisingly rare.

Clearly, The Daily Show has had an absolute field day with the fact that Cheney shot a 78 year-old man in the face... They loved this news enough to stretch it over another episode. Quite frankly, I was amazed. If they talk about it again on Thursday, that'll make an entire week of Daily Show programming about the incident. Who can blame them for eating the news up? I mean, dude, Cheney shot a 78 year-old man in the face. I don't think I need to repeat it again. Anyway, Cheney agreed to a no-holds-bar grilling public press conference about the incident -- okay, not really. He opted for an interview on FOX News (oh, whoop-de-doo), in which he lightly touched on the inner details and also stressed the importance of accuracy because... next time, he will kill Henry Whittington.

Wow, Dick Cheney really did the late-night shows a favor, didn't he? After the Vice President accidentally shot his friend Harry Whittington in the face while they were "hunting" quail, comedy writers all over the country leapt into action, penning joke after joke that linked the incident to wiretapping, weapons of mass distruction, Cheney's heart problems, and global warming (well, I don't know about that one for sure, but I'm sure someone wrote something warming-related).

This article gives a nice summary of the funnier Cheney lines from Leno, Letterman,  and The Daily Show. It also throws in lines from Jeb Bush, Senator Patrick Leahy, and White House spokesman Scott McClellan.  They're not quite as funny (though I like Leahy's line), but then again most politicians are only funny when they don't mean to be, anyway.

(Here's another summary that includes quotes from Craig Ferguson.)