Dick Cheney, and a lesbian piano bar. One of them makes you proud to be an American.
Shhh, don’t tell the other Profs, but until Labor Day I will be in a secure, undisclosed location. So for my regular posting days I have left behind a few (slightly edited) archived posts from our original MassPoliticsProfs.com website.
In place of my usual carefully constructed essay I have just a few thoughts today on recent items of political interest (to me). Hence my views on the amazing irresponsibility of Dick (“Ol’ Blood and Five Deferments”) Cheney, and finding America in a lesbian piano bar.
Former Vice-President Dick (“Ol’ Someone Else’s Kid’s Blood and Guts”) Cheney is back in the news with a new book detailing his five heart attacks. The New York Times wrote about this in In New Book, Cheney Recalls 5 Heart Attacks and His Brush with Death. He had already suffered three heart attacks when, tasked by Republican nominee George W. Bush to vet vice-presidential nominees, he improbably came up with himself as the best possible candidate. Here is the paragraph that jumped out at me from the Times article:
Among other things, the book discloses that on Sept. 11, 2001, as Mr. Cheney, in President George W. Bush’s absence, was effectively managing the response to the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington from the White House bunker, his doctors had just received indications that he was in serious risk of a heart attack.
So he got through that but might a prudent patriot elect to not put the nation in that position again by declining another run for VP? But that’s not Dick (“Ol’ Thank God for Government Health Insurance”) Cheney.
My other political insight came as my wife and I were strolling past a bar in Provincetown one Friday night and heard singing and music from a piano bar inside. We went in to strike a blow for liberty (an old Harry Truman term for having a drink) and enjoyed a piano player and a large group of aging lesbians singing delightedly off key. The assemblage was made up of folks who spent most of their lives perhaps in the closet, maybe pretending to be someone they were not, being derided; but in the last ten years of their long lives they’ve been able to get married in Massachusetts. The blue-haired chorus was having a great time belting out an assortment of show tunes and old standards but had a special vigor for one song, leaping to their feet, entwining their arms, and raising their glasses in toast. And that song was “God Bless America.”
Take that, Ted Cruz. This is our country.