Like many of you, I was looking forward to The World According to Dick Cheney when it premiered on Friday night. In fact, I even celebrated by fixing myself a Dick Cheney (that’s half light, sweet crude/half bile). But when I heard him say “I have no regrets” in the film, I was wishing I could say the same thing.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m proud of all our listed accomplishments. Going over it again would be kind of old. But there are some things I dreamed of that I could never push Dick far enough to do.
For starters, I would have tried and executed the New York Times editorial board for treason (except Judith Miller – that broad’s alright). Not sure on what grounds, but I’ve always been a ‘shoot first, and ask questions later’ sort of entity. Then I would have orchestrated a coup somewhere in Central America and installed a Sharia Law government. Now there’s a straw man you can perpetually scare people with!
Oh, and I would have put all redheads in internment camps. Don’t ask me why. They just always annoyed me.
But looking back, I have to say my biggest regret is that we had to rule from behind the throne, pulling the strings of a dauphin. I even convinced W that the only honorable way we could both leave office was in a murder/suicide pact – and we would make it easier on him by offing him first and “joining him in Heaven” later. That would have made Dick the President for real – the official portrait, face on money, presidential library. But every time I tried to get Dick to do any of these it was always “I’m having second thoughts” or “we must respect historical precedent” or “that’s murder.” Oh well, guess I had to settle for running the show from the shadows. In fact, with my inky, midnight hue and ability to swallow light, you could argue that — de facto — I was this nation’s first black President.
But like the old saying goes: You can lead a warlock to power, but you can’t make him ruthlessly rule in perpetuity. Eventually I told Dick to have me removed, and I’d wait for him for when he really needed my help — after Earth is a charred hellscape in the wake of the coming Apocalypse (spoiler alert: it’ll be in 2016).
However, if I can find solace in our time together, it’s that with unrestricted drone warfare, torture a regularly accepted practice, and the chasm between rich and poor ever-widening, I know this much to be true: You are living in the World According to Dick Cheney – or at least according to me.
Mission Accomplished.
