Lisa Moscatiello

Why did George "All Too Human" Stephanopoulos find it necessary to create a fake news story on a "Showdown" between Cheney and Obama about the President's foreign policy? It's actual news when someone who is in office and who has something at stake makes a major statement on foreign policy, knowing that he or she must live with the consequences. It is fake news when a member of the previous administration takes a pot shot at the current administration from within the walls of a like-minded institution of which he is a board member. I'm not suggesting that the former Vice President does not have the right to voice his opinion in public. I am merely suggesting that only the Fox Opinion Network should be expected to consider this "news," and that no one but Mr. Cheney's publicist should ever be forgiven for calling the event one half of a "Showdown."

Will someone please ask him a real question? Like, for example, why should we listen to you, Mr. Vice President? Or (be honest) what part of the Constitution is not expendable? If you think we should do away with the fourth amendment, there is a process for changing the document. The Founding Fathers fully expected that we would need to make changes to the Constitution, and so they set forth a specific procedure for doing so. They made it fairly difficult to amend the Constitution to protect us from rash, emotionally-based decisions, but it is nevertheless possible to revisit what was written in the 18th Century and conclude that circumstances have changed so much that some of our institutions are outdated (such as the electoral college, for example), and that possibly some of our rights will have to be trimmed back in the interest of national security. By the way, I am not saying that I believe this to be the case; my point is simply that if, as Cheney and other Bush-ites have insisted, these threats to our very survival are so great that we don't have time for the usual way we have always done justice and conducted war, then they need to make a case before the American people for amending the Constitution. That would not endanger our security in any way.

Instead, Bush and Cheney simply ignored the Constitution, domestic law, and the treaties that we have signed, and acted unilaterally, outside the authority of the American people. That is dictatorial. That is assuming fake authority based on nothing, not even any presumed divine right, like the monarchies of old, or by brute force, but by chicanery on the part of the Bush Administration and weakness and laziness on the part of, well, the rest of us. They scared us into thinking there was "no time" to deliberate (this was what, eight years ago? We are still not discussing the real questions of liberty versus security in any meaningful way). In the case of Mr. Cheney, rather than deliberate, he chose to secretly break the law, stare down anyone who would question his decisions, talk in a monotone, and tell the rest of us to go fuck ourselves.

Mr. Cheney, if you are so worried about our safety, why not come out of retirement and lend a hand in the the Global War on Terror? You should be nervously pacing around with five o'clock shadow and sweat stains under your arms, over in some "situation room" like the Kennedy administration during the Cuban missile crisis, not playing with your grandchildren in McLean. Why are you still talking?

Is there not a news person out there who is willing to risk his or her career to ask him a real question on live television? How about Campbell Brown? She's been showing more spine than anyone else on network TV these days. That is, assuming she still has a show on the air. Sober, impartial analysis does not sell.

Anybody else out there man enough?

Labels: Dick Cheney, dictatorship, go fuck yourself, impeachment, prison, stephanopoulos, torture