Posted 7/20/2004 05:34:00 PM by Douglas

A hilarious yet fictional (I hope?) account of the exchange of obscenities between Vice President Cheney and Sen. Patrick J. Leahy on the floor of the United States Senate. [read it all]

After Mr. Cheney successfully delivered the epithet and started to walk away, Mr. Leahy—sotto voce—referred to the Vice-President using a term more often heard in taverns and locker rooms than in the august Senate chamber, a term that refers to a sexual act commonly acknowledged as taboo among all cultures that proscribe incestuous contact between a mother and a son.

Mr. Cheney—apparently hearing Mr. Leahy’s remark—stopped, turned, and invited his colleague from across the aisle to engage in a sexual act that is considered a felony in some states, and which involves oral-genital contact.

Mr. Cheney wasted no time in informing Mr. Leahy that he should feel free to perform yet another anatomical impossibility—this one involving aviation, a standard sexual act, and a rolling doughnut.

Damn, dawg. A doughnut! It's go time!

“Oh, it’s like that?” Mr. Cheney queried.

“Whut? Whut?” Mr. Leahy shot back.

“Once again,” Mr. Cheney replied (quite obviously quoting a lyric from Ice Cube’s 1990 album, “AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted”), “it’s on.”

It's on, indeed.

Most of the rhymes kicked therein cannot be quoted in a family publication, but observers gave Mr. Cheney credit for his deceptively laid-back flow. Mr. Leahy was applauded for managing to rhyme the phrases “unethical for certain,” “crude oil spurtin’,” and “like Halliburton.”

Damn that's funny. Most rappers have to make up words to make it rhyme. Certain, spurtin', and Halliburton. . . sheer genius. But you can't have an old-school Senate rumble without the Senior Senator from Massachusetts, can you? Of course not.

Edward M. Kennedy (D.-Mass.) was the first to notice that the two men were circling each other, Mr. Cheney brandishing a switchblade and Mr. Leahy the jagged neck of a broken bottle.

“Oh, snap!” Mr. Kennedy recalls thinking at the time. “It’s getting kind of hectic up in this piece.”

Of course, Teddy had a broken bottle handy for Mr. Leahy, but he had to empy it, first.

How 'bout the epilog?

(In a related story, an AM talk-radio host in Billings, Montana, who expressed his disappointment with the behavior of Mr. Cheney and Mr. Leahy—on the air, he asked his listeners, “Do we taxpayers really have time for this kind of crap?”—was fined five hundred thousand dollars for violating the F.C.C.’s recent, Senate-approved guidelines prohibiting explicit references to human excrement.)

If only every argument in the Senate could be resolved in such a humane manner.