Can You Feel The Love?

It's a good thing that the liberal media are there to provide unconditional support to us liberals.  Because without it, where would we be?  But, apparently,  in the interest of being fair and balanced, today's NYT has a front page story describing the love that some folks have for, ahem, Dick Cheney.  I just want to puke.

Grace Mosier, a 6 year old Kansas resident can feel it.

"I really, really like him," says Grace, who can tell you what state the vice president was born in (Nebraska), where he went to grade school (College View, in Lincoln) and the names of his dogs (Dave and Jackson). She gets her fix of Cheney fun-facts by visiting the White House Web site for children. It says there that his favorite teacher was Miss Duffield and that he used to run a company called Halliburton.

So young and yet she's already swallowed so much kool-aid.  (I try to keep the 7 year old boran2 boy away from websites that might be harmful to children, but apparently my concern is not universally held.)

But of course this is a not condition exhibited only by young children.  Adults suffer too.

"How about a big Kansas welcome for Vice President Dick Cheney?" Representative Jim Ryun, a five-term Republican, says at a lunchtime fund-raiser on Thursday.

And a big Kansas welcome he gets: cheers, sustained applause, even some war whoops -- yes, war whoops. Loving ones.

"Well, that warm welcome is almost enough to make me want to run for office again," the vice president responds. "Almost."

Ugh. < covers mouth, runs to bathroom >  Yep, war whoops for the vice president that had managed to defer himself out of military service.  But, really, why quibble over small details when Dick Cheney comes to town?  The party should go on unimpeded.

But the NYT does devote at least a few grafs to reality.

Mr. Cheney's favorability ratings might be in an underground bunker, somewhere beneath the president's (at 20 percent in the most recent New York Times poll). Critics deride him as a Prince of Darkness whose occasional odd episodes -- swearing at a United States senator, shooting a friend in a hunting accident and then barely acknowledging it publicly -- suggest a striking indifference to how he is perceived.Even admirers who laud his intellect and steadiness rarely mention anything about his electrifying rooms or people.

Yes, interesting things do happen when Dick is around.

And no one dares to let reality intrude upon the party.

None of the Cheneyphiles here are mentioning Mark Foley, the former Republican congressman at the center of the House page scandal, or the precarious hold Republicans might have on Congress or, for the most part, the problems in Iraq. Nor is anyone mentioning Mr. Cheney's unpopularity in the polls, except in terms of all the unfair attacks from Democrats and the "liberal media."

Well, perhaps no one mentions these things for fear becoming the victim of another shooting "accident".  But then again, maybe not.

"They throw so much trash at him, it's just unbelievable," says Morris Thomason, a rancher who lives in Belvidere, Kan., but who grew up in Casper, Wyo., Cheney's boyhood home.

And wholely undeserved trash it is too.

Here's a nice quote from Ann Ryun, the wife of Congressman Jim Ryun:

"There was a peacefulness and a truthfulness to this man that really caught my heart," says the congressman's wife, Anne Ryun, who is clutching a Bush-Cheney placard from the 2000 campaign that the vice president has just autographed.

Yep, peacefulness and truthfulness.

< covers mouth, runs back to bathroom >