My wife was a little irritated when I reacted sarcastically to a puff piece on ABC about Cheney's poor health a few days ago.
"They found it!"
Read the whole story after the jump. (And please, go check out Chacounne's excellent diary, which prompted me to write this one.)
Actually, the whole exchange went something like this:
ABC News graphic: CHENEY'S HEART
"They found it!" I exclaimed.
She said, "I don't understand why every time he is mentioned, you do that. And it really bothers me that the first thing out of our son's mouth when he saw that story sounded like something you would say."
"Good! at least he's paying attention to something I've told him," I said. (Boy #1 is now 18, and of course knows everything about everything.)
"I know you don't like him, but whatever your opinion of him is, he is a human being and deserves the same respect as any other human being," she said.
"The guy's a war criminal," I said. "He lied us into an unnecessary, unwarranted war. What about the thousands of lives lost because of that? Don't they deserve that same respect?"
"That's not for you to say," she said.
"You're right - it's for the government of Spain, or Italy, or Nigeria* to determine, which should be easy, because he's already admitted it.
"And our government - the Obama administration - is blocking extradition. That's our government doing it.
"That's us."
She had no response to that.
* Ok, the Nigeria thing was "just" bribery, which I guess is now considered excusable because "everybody does it." But isn't America supposed to be someplace special? Where we at least
try to be better than say, or China, or Burma, or the Soviet Union?
"Everybody does it" is not an excuse I would accept from my children. We should not accept it from our elected representatives.