http://www.newyorker.com/shouts/content/?040726sh_shouts
> NEW DETAILS SURFACE
> by PAUL SIMMS
> Issue of 2004-07-26
> Posted 2004-07-19
>
> Vice President Dick Cheney cursed at Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, Vermont
> Democrat, in a confrontation on the Senate floor while members were
> having their annual group picture taken earlier this week. . . .
> According to [an] aide, Mr. Cheney . . . responded with a barnyard
> epithet, urging Mr. Leahy to perform an anatomical sexual
> impossibility. --The Washington Times.
>
> After Mr. Cheney successfully delivered the epithet and started to
> walk away, Mr. Leahy--sotto voce--referred to the Vice-President using
> a term more often heard in taverns and locker rooms than in the august
> Senate chamber, a term that refers to a sexual act commonly
> acknowledged as taboo among all cultures that proscribe incestuous
> contact between a mother and a son.
>
> Mr. Cheney--apparently hearing Mr. Leahy's remark--stopped, turned,
> and invited his colleague from across the aisle to engage in a sexual
> act that is considered a felony in some states, and which involves
> oral-genital contact.
>
> Mr. Leahy then suggested that the president of the Senate take his
> gavel and use it to perform an act that, while not technically
> impossible in anatomical terms, would certainly be considered both
> unseemly and unhygienic, and which would require an unusual
> combination of single-minded ambition and physical relaxation.
>
> Mr. Cheney wasted no time in informing Mr. Leahy that he should feel
> free to perform yet another anatomical impossibility--this one
> involving aviation, a standard sexual act, and a rolling doughnut.
>
> At this point, according to observers, both statesmen decided--by
> seemingly unspoken mutual consent--to abandon the gutter patois of the
> common carnival worker and to resort instead to an eminently more
> quotable (but, to those not versed in the vagaries of hip-hop idiom,
> more confusing) exchange of viewpoints.
>
> "Oh, it's like that?" Mr. Cheney queried.
>
> "Whut? Whut?" Mr. Leahy shot back.
>
> "Once again," Mr. Cheney replied (quite obviously quoting a lyric from
> Ice Cube's 1990 album, "AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted"), "it's on."
>
> As a quick-thinking senatorial aide switched on the Senate's
> public-address system and cued up the infamous "Seven Minutes of Funk"
> break, Mr. Leahy and Mr. Cheney went head-to-head in what can only be
> described as a "take no prisoners" freestyle rap battle.
>
> Most of the rhymes kicked therein cannot be quoted in a family
> publication, but observers gave Mr. Cheney credit for his deceptively
> laid-back flow. Mr. Leahy was applauded for managing to rhyme the
> phrases "unethical for certain," "crude oil spurtin'," and "like
> Halliburton."
>
> Despite the fact that both participants brought their A-game and
> succeeded in dropping mad scientifics, the bout seemed to end in a
> draw.
>
> Unfortunately, as other senators (along with assorted aides and
> support-staff members) were casting their votes to decide the winner,
> using the admittedly subjective but generally accepted "Make some
> noise up in here!" protocols, Mr. Cheney and Mr. Leahy took the
> proceedings to what one aide accurately described as "the next level."
>
> Edward M. Kennedy (D.-Mass.) was the first to notice that the two men
> were circling each other, Mr. Cheney brandishing a switchblade and Mr.
> Leahy the jagged neck of a broken bottle.
>
> "Oh, snap!" Mr. Kennedy recalls thinking at the time. "It's getting
> kind of hectic up in this piece."
>
> But before either of the aggrieved public servants could bust a
> potentially injurious move on his rival, cooler heads prevailed: a
> veteran Capitol Hill security guard pacified the bloodthirsty white
> men (Mr. Leahy first, then Mr. Cheney) with a shot from a
> tranquillizer gun. He then had them returned to their cages in the
> sub-basement of the Old Executive Office Building, where both men are
> kept and fed during non-business hours under the watchful eye of a
> volunteer from Washington's National Zoo.
>
> (In a related story, an AM talk-radio host in Billings, Montana, who
> expressed his disappointment with the behavior of Mr. Cheney and Mr.
> Leahy--on the air, he asked his listeners, "Do we taxpayers really
> have time for this kind of crap?"--was fined five hundred thousand
> dollars for violating the F.C.C.'s recent, Senate-approved guidelines
> prohibiting explicit references to human excrement.)
--
Gerald Oskoboiny <
[email protected]>
http://impressive.net/people/gerald/