We have gotten a blizzard of email regarding Vice President Cheney's parka, worn to a ceremony marking the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. We already printed one, along with a response.
Our own Dennis Sevakis makes a very good point:
Mr. Cheney dressed for his health. Having myself had a heart attack and open—heart surgery, I can attest to the fact that those who have undergone this experience are very sensitive to the cold. It can seem piercing and sometimes hits you right in the chest just from breathing the frigid air. The V.P. was not being inconsiderate nor disrespectful. Just prudent.
This strikes me as the most sensible thing said about the incident to date. But it is unlikely to satisfy some of the writers who see us a evil and/or hypocritical. For example:
If President Clinton or John Kerry had dressed the way Dick Cheney did, you would have bewailed how he was embarrassing our noble country. Funny how the same writers who praise Bush for restoring a sense of dignity to the White House with his dress code, ignore or diminish this incident. But I suppose Bush has embarrassed this country so badly throughout the world that whatever Cheney wears doesn't really matter that much.
A. DeCurtis
or this:
I'll bet if Dick "CRASH CART" Cheney had appeared in a Nazi SS uniform, you and the rest of your looneys would have dismissed it as a minor lapse of fashion sense. After all, you right—wing apologists have a way of justifying anything sleezy, improper, dishonest or otherwise against the norm as perfectly rational so long as you're a dyed in the wool republican. Nothing you moronic bastards do surprises me any longer. You just make up the rules as you go along, assuming that none of this will ever catch up with you. Thing is, your little "utopian world" has started to show a myriad of cracks, which given a reasonable amount of time ( shorter than you think ), will be your ultimate downfall. Payback surely is a bitch, and I and many others in this country are just waiting till everyone in this corrupt administration has "shot themselves in the foot" one too many times. They will go down and they'll take every last one of you with them.
Just ask yourself this question. How effing bright can Bush be when he dismisses our ability to capture bin Laden (who after all, is the only reason we could justify any military action in the Middle East) because " He's hiding!!!" ? Yeah, you just go merrily along, apologizing for these idiots.
JOHN PITT
I find it fascinating that fashion triggers such responses.
Thomas Lifson 1 30 05
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