Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
I am not sure why everyone is all worked up about a Confederate flag flying at Cheney’s hunting club. Shouldn’t we be celebrating the fact that he didn’t “pepper” anyone in the face?
Take it away.
*** Update ***
The flag in question.
Our verdict: this is stupid.
Comments are closed.
[…] The whole thing is unhinged, nuts, and dangerous, an excellent target for Sadly No! and John Cole. […]
[…] Dick Cheney went hunting at a gun club where a Confederate flag was hanging inside a garage. Just think, if we could get someone on Cheney’s staff to send Greenwald a rude email, we could have garage-flag-email-tone gate. That would be worth at least six posts at SadlyNo. John Cole passes on this one. […]
r€nato
wtf are the stars and bars doing flying way north of the Mason-Dixon line?
r€nato
…I mean, come on. Yankees can’t even semi-legitimately claim the flag represents their ‘heritage’ (of treason in defense of slavery).
Barry
He’s a transplanted Texan (for tax purposes, at least). And an oil man, which makes him the most Texan of Texans.
jenniebee
Krugman says that it’s all about race. I never thought so before, but geez…
capelza
As has been noted, why is the flag in N.Y.? At a country club..oh they are such rebels…
And yes, it is nice Cheney didn’t shoot someone in the face this time.
Krista
I think Dick Cheney is a terrible human being, don’t get me wrong on that.
But from reading the article, it was a small flag hanging up inside of a garage on the hunt club property, and they’re not sure if the garage was even open during that time. It IS plausible that Cheney didn’t even know it was there.
over_educated
Was it flying at the club or hanging in the garage? I didn’t get a clear sense of whether it was up on a flagpole or just hanging in the groundskeepers garage. If it is the former then it is a problem, if it is the latter than I can’t imagine blaming Cheney for it.
Zifnab
Hey, if Dick Cheney wants to run off and start his own country with Boy King George as Commander-in-Chief, I say we pack him up with his flag and ship’m off. Then the pair of them can commit clusterfucks and wide-stanced scandals at their leisure.
That said, shouldn’t wingnuts the nation over be screaching, howling, and flinging poo over the disrespect Cheney has for the Stars and Stripes? I mean, if that was a Mexican flag over his country club, I can name at least half a dozen bloggers who would outright shit a brick.
Breschau
“Peppered”? Wow, that does have a much nicer ring to it than “shot him in the face”, doesn’t it?
Thank heaven for our adversarial mainstream media.
Pb
Wow, some redneck at a gun club up north has a Confederate flag hanging in his garage. Who knew? Good thing we’ve got Al Sharpton around to condemn it for us. This is the dumbest Cheney story since the last one about him and Obama being “cousins”, a mere eight generations back.
Is the media going for some sort of banality of evil angle here? If they wanted to start writing real stories about what Cheney has actually done over the years, well, they could start any time. Have you heard the one about the faked satellite pictures that helped get us into the first Gulf War? No? Well, how ’bout that Confederate flag…
mrmobi
Hey, John. Did you know that James Wolcott is linking to you these days? I try to read him every day there is a new post. Just thought you’d like to know.
Golly, Cheney and a confederate flag. I’m shocked, shocked I tell you! No noose?
Surabaya Stew
Of all the legitimate things to get worked up on over Dick Cheney, this falls short of qualifying. I will admit that it sure sounded worthwhile at first, but seeing how the flag was in a service area of the hunt club facility where overlords like Dick Cheney are unlikely to go, makes it a non-story. I gathered that it was flying outside on the roof of the clubhouse over the Stars and Stripes, from what the headline seemed to promise; now that would have been a story! Oh well; perhaps someone else will get shot in the face this time…
Face
Damn Uppity Negros all panty-bunched over a piece of cloth?
Signed,
Sean Hannity
canuckistani
Anyone who is a friend of Dick Cheney’s probably deserves to be shot in the face.
p.lukasiak
I’m sorry, but the CNN story sounds more like an Onion-type parody than actual news
Why does the media always go to Sharpton — other than to hype a non-story into a full-blown racial controversy…
RSA
It’s a tempest in a teacup. Aside from noting that if some Democratic politician were in Cheney’s shoes, he’d say something, but we expect a Republican politician not to, for fear of alienating some portion of his base, I don’t think there’s anything here that we haven’t seen already.
D-Chance.
I love Texas. Marvel at its bureaucracy in action.
Zifnab
If you’re just going to blurt out the answer, don’t bother asking the question.
John Cole
Yes. Another person I mocked and was a dick to who I now agree with almost totally.
The list is long.
grumpy realist
Yeah–if you want to order Outraged Dignity with a dish of Abhorred Racism on the side, go to Sharpton. He’ll always deliver.
bernarda
It was not a “small flag” as you can see by looking up the picture.
Also, the Clover Valley Rod and Gun Club is a FARM that raises birds for great white hunters like Dicko to take pot shots at. Does this farm receive agricultural subsidies as other farms where Dicko likes to shoot do?
CNN once described the farm as a place where businessmen get together to drink and play cards at night, presumably after killing a lot of tame birds.
Bombadil
Coming soon, to NBC — “My Name is Cole”, a new sitcom where a former wingnut travels all over the blogosphere making amends with everyone he’s ever mocked, in order to rescue his karma!
Starring Brad Garrett as John Cole, Jerry van Dyke as Tim F., Morris the Cat as Tunch, and Marshall Mathers as The Beaver.
Ryan S.
My vote for scariest baby picture award
eyeball
Speaking for The Left, Liberals, Bush-Cheney loathers, Progressives, Netrootia and The Entire Reality Based Community: We don’t give a hairy rat’s ass about the rebel flag at the hunt club. We give that rat’s ass about the insane warmongering lying snoozing friend-shooting let’s-bomb-Iran jackass — also known as Cheney. By the way, P-Lu, if you want to find Sharpton media-whoring on this you’ll have to look no farther than Fox News tonight.Those rotten leftists.
And Cole, you’re still on probation because you used to go along with these pajamas and cheetos putzes. But you are fast making amends for all those years in dickheadia.
Bombadil
OMG! I’m sitting here with tears running down my face — that is the funniest thing I’ve seen all week!
Mr. Sifter
Visit my blog for my thoughts on Rudy’s recent lie about health care.
Punchy
My vote for the Word of the Day.
Jake
Ah, the wilds of New York. The deep south of the north.
Pb
Ok, first, here’s the flag — yeah, I don’t know how they could have missed that, unless, of course, the door was shut, or it was dark, etc., etc….
Also note that the media apparently didn’t see it six years ago, either — when Cheney was hunting there right after 9/11. But on the plus side, now you know what “undisclosed location” means: road trip!
Yep, it’s right up there with “Dumbfuckistan”.
Billy K
Old as the intertubes and shopped.
Just FYI’in…
Punchy
They tried to use “sprayed in the face”, but discovered much to their chagrin that it was trademarked by Ron Jeremy.
Hence, “peppered”. No word on whether freckled people or vegetables (not Terri Shiavo) feel insulted.
The Other Steve
I still think the idea of shooting chickens on a farm is unsportsman like.
Especially when their wings are clipped, and doubly espresso when they’re staked to the ground.
And people flying the confederate flag should rememeber this… YOU LOST! GET THE FUCK OVER IT!
wasabi gasp
Snoozers! Cheney and Obama are second cousins or something. How can anyone accuse a country club of racism when they have a member like soul brother Cheney?!
Dreggas
Ya know…I read that article and really, it’s a non-story. Of course bringing in Sharpton and hearing he plans a prayer vigil at the “hunting” club just proves that he is the leading race pimp in the nation, not like that was not a forgone conclusion.
As for the “hunting” club. That’s for geriatrics, those who wouldn’t know the first thing about real hunting and end up in situations like this. Don’t get me wrong, I used to hunt, hell I may start hunting again once the divorce is settled, but when I went hunting it was hunting, none of this canned hunt shit.
Now as to the stars and bars in NY. Guess what, a lot of people have the confederate flag and use it as a rebel symbol. Hell I had a motorcycle t-shirt that had it flying in the background when I was a kid, didn’t mean I was racist. Yes it has a history of being associated with racism and yeah whoever flew it at this place could have been a racist but a lot of the time it was hung on a wall as a rebel symbol.
It must have been a real slow news day.
r€nato
you’re forgiven for not knowing any better as a kid, but now you’re an adult. The stars and bars symbolize a regime every bit as depraved and murderous as the Nazis. You could be a rebel against society too by sporting the swastika on a t-shirt, but it probably wouldn’t win you a lot of street cred.
The Confederacy was all about the right to maintain the institution of slavery on the North American continent, and in fact to spread it wherever possible (because in the minds of Southerners at that time, if it wasn’t advancing then it was threatened). Slavery was about the enslavement and genocide of an entire race of people.
I know it’s difficult to conceive that some of our ancestors engaged in their own homegrown brand of genocide, but it’s a fact. If you still don’t understand, try talking to some black folks about how they feel whenever they see some yay-hoo sporting the Stars and Bars.
Tsulagi
As far as this Confederate flag in a service garage, I’d go with that.
But hopefully Cheney lived up to his legend in his latest canned shoot. Nothing says class and man skillz for the Pub lapel pin police like being able to kill over 400 clipped wing pheasants released from nets.
Anne Laurie
Ah, the wilds of New York. The deep south of the north.
Bingo — IIRC, it’s where the Cornfed Yankee hissownseff was spawned & nurtured. People see “New York” and think NYC, but much of the rest of the state is as red as Manhattan is blue. It’s easier to be one of the 24% when, as J. Foxworthy put it, “Your family tree don’t fork”.
Of course the Important People Like Us, the club owners who invited Cheney in the first place, would *never* do anything as low-rent as hang the Stars’n’Bars in a public place. No doubt some low-browed no-hoper of a grease monkey or a manure shoveler is going to be winkled out of the back room, paraded in front of the media, and publicly fired for Raising the Subtext in Front of the Neighbors. That will make Al Sharpton look like he’s doing the same thing Cheney enjoyed — blasting a pen-raised victim that has as much hope of escape as the average clay skeet target.
capelza
Not to go off topic, but am I the only one old enough to remember when the Swastika was also a sign of “rebellion”? Bikers, etc.
I don’t buy that “it’s a sign of rebellion” crap anymore. I grew up with the Beauregard Flag in my house (in the South)..the history of the War was all around me, bullet holes in my firend’s house from the war..the old stage coach road goes straight through my parent’s property…my ancestors lie at Vicksburg and Shiloh. But that stuff is kept inside and it is a personal memory of people from the Upland South…along side my ancestors who fought and died for the Union (Missouri was a border state).
Now, anyone who wears or shows a Swastika is considered an idiot and/or a racist. Yet, the Flag is given a pass.
Dreggas
No it probably won’t but the honest truth? I don’t give a rats ass. It’s just something to get worked up over since Cheney didn’t shoot someone in the face this time. It’s much adieu about nothing, it’s a fucking flag, tear it down. Now if they had a headline reading “Cheney presides over cross burning ad grand dragon” I’d be a bit more concerned, if not totally suprised.
As far as my ancestors, to my knowledge they weren’t involved in having slaves, or importing them. They were all “Yankees” and from what I know many were still canadian, the rest had already dealt with oppression since they were natives.
Jake
If Al S. needs some ankles to chew on, why isn’t he savaging this schmuck?
Svensker
As has been noted, why is the flag in N.Y.? At a country club..oh they are such rebels…
As Annie Laurie notes, upstate NY is NOT Manhattan. In fact, the KKK was (is?) still active up there quite recently.
So, yeah, the Confederate Flag flying at an upstate hunt club — patronized by the likes of Cheney — means something more than “some rube out in the sticks who likes the rebel flag”.
I doubt that Cheney is a big advocate of racism against blacks, but I also doubt that he has any problem hanging out with folks who are. Specially if he can drink some likker and shoot stuff while hanging.
Dreggas
Well not all of upstate, but yes a good portion. Having been born and raised there myself I was happy to move.
snorkel
This reminds me of a jingle contest held at Firedoglake back when the peppering occurred. The winning entry is till seared in my brain. Here, without ascribing credit to the author whose name I am too lazy to research, it is:
If polygraphs were epitaphs
This short but edifying
Would crown the veep
In his final sleep
Here lies Dick, still lying
Jake
Farkin’ brilliant.
Peter Johnson
Is that all you liberals have today? Surely there must be some poor terrorist who got waterboarded that you could feel sorry for instead. Or maybe Laura Bush wore a veil somewhere or Bush mispronounced a word.
This is weak stuff, even by your usual standards.
Dreggas
Knowing what the Swastika represented PRE hitler it doesn’t bother me much either. Yes I know it came to represent evil but around some 60 years ago but it’s history is far greater than one event. Hell you might as well say the falcon (I believe that was the bird used on a lot of the Nazi flag staffs etc.) may as well represent nazism too.
I’m not trying to start some heated debate here, really I’m not. I’m just saying to me this is a non-story and nothing to get everyone’s collective panties in a bunch over.
Zifnab
I’ll drink to that.
Zifnab
*pulls out a knife*
*opens refrigerator door*
*pulls out large pie plate*
*slices a large piece of apple pie*
*puts pie on plate*
*hands plate to Peter McLongJohnson*
Here, it looks like you could use some of this.
Dreggas
Zif,
That was my reaction as well.
Dreggas
This is much more disconcerting to me than the confederate flag.
Bombadil
IIRC, it was the right-wingers who got their panties twisted by Laura Bush and Nancy Pelosi wearing the scarves, not the lefties.
MNPundit
Seriously, what did you expect?
Cheney has long been openly hostile towards everything American stands for.
grumpy realist
Based on what I know of Upstate New York (hey, I grew up here), my feeling is that you might find the Confederate flag hung up somewhere by some redneck asshole who probably came up here from the South anyway, but…a hunting lodge?
Trust me, the people who are running that place are thinking only:” let’s see how much we can charge those jerks from NYC to play at being hunters.”
REAL Upstaters wouldn’t go within 100 miles of a canned hunt. And most of us can’t stand the weekend drunk idiots from NYC who bumble around in the woods, ignore all rules about safe hunting, are totally clueless about how close they are shooting to human dwellings, and end up potting cows (“oh, I thought it was a deer!”), dogs (“oh, I thought it was a small deer!”), and each other: (“Oh, I thought you were a small deer standing on its hind legs.”)
As said: IDIOTS.
gypsy howell
I lived in Dutchess County for a while, pretty close to LaGrangeville, and trust me, much as I still love the place, I’d have to say there are plenty of homegrown rednecks there. Seeing the rebel flag didn’t strike me as a real rarity there.
All the same, must be a slow news day.
capelza
Dreggas..I am not disagreeing with you.
I was thinking macro I guess.
The Swasitka now is a pariah (despite it’s long, long history) and yet I still here the excuses made for the Confederate Flag. Anyone now who chooses to fly, wear or tattoo the Swastika because of it’s ancient Aryan or Indian symbolism know they will 9or should) get enormous amount of flak for it.
It’s just an observation. The flag in the garage sgouldn’t be a big deal. Sharpton is an ass.
DougJ
Wasn’t there a crazy Republican scandal in Duchess county that involved a suspicious suicide and multiple higher ups going to jail? Or was that Putnam county? It’s a great story but I can’t find links.
Perry Como
Can we talk about the fiscal responsibility of the party of adults yet?
mrmobi
Couldn’t have said it better myself, Renato. That said, this is such a waste of time, given all the magnificent fuckups the Party of Torture has going at the moment.
Dreggas
grumpy,
Sounds like you and I grew up in the same area at least with talking about the morons shooting cows, dogs and each other. We used to have the running joke about “Deano and the deer”. Dino was the typical idiot from NYC who shot a cow, called it a spikehorn and was trying to figure out, with his friend vinny how to get it on top of their Volvo.
Where abouts in Upstate were (or are) you from?
bago
Sounds totally Vicous.
Surabaya Stew
I stand partially corrected; this is a full-blown mini-scandal!
Zifnab
Sure, that trend line for Clinton may look impressive, but keep in mind that it started under Bush 41 and continued under a Republican Congress. These two factors are clearly the only things that kept us from plummeting face first into socialist economic depression.
Those two things and Vince Foster valiantly martyring himself to draw attention to Clenis’s evil ways.
The Other Andrew
I’ve always wished that the “Don’t Tread On Me” flag would make a comeback. I think that’s a good mascot for both domestic and foreign policy. (“Leave me alone, and leave us alone, and we’ll be fine”–not to be confused with “The government is persecuting me by making me pay child support!”) Maybe Ron Paul should be using it.
Pb
Perry Como,
…and those are just the cooked numbers; see here…
grumpy realist
Dreggas–I’m originally from Ithaca, which of course means a weird mixture of granola hippy-ism (Ithaca never did get out of the 1960s), the intellectual firepower at Cornell (lotsa refugee scientists during WWII and later), and pure New England backcountry once you get 10 miles out of town. Luckily we’re a little too far and remote for the standard NYC weekender to make it up here.
Upstate NY is trying to revitalize itself with wind-farms and nanotech, which makes for an interesting cultural clash….
Dreggas
A 9 year old on File Sharing:
Dreggas
I lived in Saratoga County, on the Sacandaga Lake to be exact. You couldn’t avoid city people even though we were up there in the Adriondacks. They owned the beach front homes and always blew into town during the summer acting like they owned the place (the Jerseyites were the worst). In the winter they’d come up to hunt and snow mobile and do all those winter things. Of course they left their brains back in the city and just brought bullets instead.
Dreggas
WTF?!?!
To quote Susan Powter: “STOP THE INSANITY”
Sstarr
The Confederate flag is the flag of traitors. By displaying that flag you are saying “I support the idea that the United States of America should be destroyed.” The people who fought under that flag fought for the dismemberment of this nation, the desecration of it’s constitution and spat on the graves of the founding fathers. It’s shameful that the vice president of the United States would ever be associated with this flag of traitors.
capelza
Dreggas..that is depressing beyond belief…on so many levels (most of them involving stupidity and ignorance and a shocking lack of real “support for the troops”).
Really, it makes me cry.
Dreggas
Just shoot me…
Don’t get me wrong I know it’s bad that the birds might be affected but people bitch and moan that we need more wind and solar power put in to deal with energy demand and global warming. They balk at talk of nuclear power. So they start putting in new wind and solar power generators but now we have to worry about the birds.
I can see why people get upset and tear their hair out.
I have another idea, let’s start using more hydro-electric power generation methods. If you’re concerned about the fish don’t be, we’ll open a cannery next door.
Sorry but if it’s not one thing it’s another.
Tax Analyst
Dreggas, I went to your “WTF” link and got tossed off the InterNet both times. But I did see the flash-line about “The Majority of Americans Think it’s OK to bomb Iran”. Or at least that’s what I THINK I saw…it went away pretty quick. And that would account for capelza’s reaction – and pretty much mine as well, although there’s not too much today that still moves me past cynical resignation all the way to actual tears.
I don’t know what the exact context of the question could have been, but either way it makes me ill to consider the flip disregard so many American’s seem to have for human life, especially if it comes in a different hue.
Tax Analyst
BTW, did anyone happen to see this?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21536128/
Tax Analyst
OOPS! To my last post – I meant to add that a disaster of that caliber would positively dwarf the loss and devastation of Hurricane Katrina and the very recent & terrible fires out here in SoCal.
ConservativelyLiberal
As much as I despise Darth Cheney, this is not his problem. If anything, it is the problem of the hunt club. I have to agree with a poster above who said that the confederate flag is the flag of traitors. Damn straight.
It is the flag of people who tried to destroy the United States by turning it against itself. It represents slavery and the fight to keep slavery alive. It represents hundreds of thousands of lives wasted just to selfishly keep a despicable practice alive. The states rights argument is a smokescreen. It is clear to the simplest mind that ‘states rights’ is codespeak for ‘right to keep and trade slaves’.
The confederate flag is the flag of a defeated traitor movement, and it has no place in public life here in the US. If people of the south want to keep one for personal historical reasons and as museum pieces, no problem. But this flag should never see a flagpole again, IMO. It is representative of one of the most despicable acts that one human can do to another, short of rape or murder (of which there was plenty of that too for the slaves), all in the name of profit and personal gain.
PaulW
All this bother over a flag draped on the inside of someone’s car port?! If the flag was on a pole out front with Cheney genuflecting afore it, then maybe this would be a major scandal. Jesus. This ain’t nothing. Now if we can focus on more important scandals, like the Blackwater immunity fiasco…
dbrown
A Confederate flag is a flag of treason for all patriotic Americans and the ultimate symbol of terrorism for African-Americans. Remember under that flag of hate hundreds of thousands of Americans (on both sides) were killed in the terrible war that the Confederate States started and long after any chance of victory, continued until all poor Southern whites were horribly beaten down just so the Southern elite could carry on for the sake of their honor – of course, the poor Southern white’s paid in their blood (sounds familiar to a lot of Republicans mantra on Iraq); a war who’s sole purpose was to support an elite group of slave owning land owners who controlled 99% of the wealth and held sway over 95% of the poor white population who were too convinced by propaganda that they wouldn’t be vastly better off if slavery was abolish. The poor whites, in reward for their blind obedience, were lead like sleep to the slaughter in order to defend “State’s Right’s” – the past, and current code word for anti-black hate (again, sounds like the current Republican mantra and how Regan started his first presidential bid – amazing how nothing really changes and some foolish people never learn – about hate speech NOT slavery.)
Confederate flag supporters – enjoy your ranting about the truth of a flag that soiled all meaning of American freedom and trashed our constitution, morals and lead to the murder of more Americans than all other wars combined – facts are facts.
jcricket
America has clearly jumped the shark
jcricket
Nope, too busy watching the flower petals being strewn (is that a word?) at the feet of our soldiers and the chants of “USA! USA” in the streets of Iraq. Along with all those cute pictures of the kids in the schools we built.
What’s that sound I hear? Is that water?
Dreggas
No the article said it mirrored public opinion as it was just before Iraq…
jcricket
Via IM a friend just pointed out that this is also the main source of electricity for that region. And since we’ve had such a problem maintaining power for Iraqis, the failure of this damn and the subsequent deaths of 500,000+ people would actually kill two birds with one stone.
USA! USA! We’re #1!
chazaroo
My oh my oh my. I am so happy I read Balloon Juice today and found out dichead cheney is a racist.
chazaroo
The photo was erroneous. The cheney office was furious, the media showed the wrong side of the flag, the swastika always takes precedence over the stars and bars.
BIRDZILLA
If anyone wants to display the confederate flag its their right to do so and if JESSIE JACKASSON and AL SHAPTON and the NAACP dont like it then they can go jump in a lake