Misfire

V.P. CHENEY INVOLVED IN SHOOTING INCIDENT

Image, victim in bad shape

from Satire News Service

Vice President Cheney, while on a quail hunting trip, accidentally shot his image and the ratings of the Republican Party in the face, as well as Harry Whittington, a major donor to the Republican party. Within seconds after the misfire, image consultants and Karl Rove were notified and raced to the scene, almost beating the ambulance and medical personnel. The prognosis was not good.

"This will be a tough thing for him to get over," said Harley Gamie. "The damage looked bad from here, and we will have to exert all our efforts just to keep the situation stable. The slightest slip and things go will downhill and take a turn for the worse, inflicting possibly fatal damage. Oh, how's Harry, by the way?"

The White House was notified of the incident soon after the image consultants were and there was a conference on how to handle this. The end result was, as one person in the White House put it, "Cheney, YOU shot the guy, YOU tell people about it." Cheney, famed far and wide for his openness and non-secrecy, immediately let the word be known that nothing really important had happened.

Katherine Armstrong, the owner of the property and a witness to the image incident, was designated as the liaison to the press on Sunday, a mere eighteen hours or so after the possible accidental manslaughter. In a totally unrelated coincidence, Karl Rove had been on the phone with her ninety minutes after the shooting "exchanging biscuit recipes," claims Armstrong. So far, Mrs. Armstrong has been just as forthcoming and open as the Vice President has been, mainly saying, "Hmmm?"

The Republican party seemed at a loss on how to handle this emergency. At first, they said it was Mr. Whittington's fault for not calling attention to himself and going on a hunt with a sixty-seven year old man in the first place. They also hinted that perhaps, in spite of all the donation to the Republican Party, Mr. Whittington may have been influenced by Democrats to get himself shot for a cheap and easy political point. "It would be just like them," said an anonymous press release.

This policy of blame the victim, seen to great effect in the Katrina aftermath, surprisingly failed to work here and left the consultants scrambling for a new escape hole. One idea was to gather people who had been shot by similar ammo and shotguns to show that the injuries weren't really that big a deal. Borrowing from the "snowflake babies" label, this group would have been called the "Pellet People". The idea was dropped when no one stepped forward to join the club.

The NRA offered its own campaign, built around the idea that, hey, these things happen. This motion was tabled.

Another idea was to retroactively make the terror alert for Mrs. Armstrong's ranch "red" for that hunting weekend and saying that the Vice President thought he saw a terrorist. This plan met with great enthusiasm until it was realized that the White House press corps, even today, had a better than fifty percent chance of catching this lie.

It was finally decided that in return for Mr. Whittington taking the blame for the whole incident, President Bush would push through a tax break just for him.

Democrats were quick to leap on this incident, claiming if THEY had shot someone accidentally, they would have called the ambulance first and their health care plan would have taken care of the bill, but they wouldn't have shot anyone since their gun control laws would have stopped such a tragedy.

In related news, the quail Mr. Cheney missed in this incident has been placed on the Terrorist Watch List. He is considered feathered and dangerous, and is probably Muslim, according to eyewitness descriptions.