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April
19,
2004
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Cheney Supports Gun Control, And BuzzFlash Can Prove It! A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL Cheney was in Pittsburgh on Saturday, prostrating himself before the annual NRA convention, by claiming that John Kerry was an enemy of the gun guys. You know the annual Republican gun guy prostitution ritual: Cheney trots out the "enemy of the Second Amendment" clichés and that Kerry wants to take away all their guns -- you know that sort of red meat rhetoric for the pistol packing and plinking crowd. At least he didn't express a desire to hang Kerry, as Charlton Heston, Ex-President of the NRA, did in regards to Al Gore in 2000. Thank God for those little things! The battery operated Vice-President and architect of the disastrous war in Iraq wanted to assure the assembled members of the "Church of the Holy Gun" that the words gun control were as evil to the ears of himself and his dauphin prince, George W., as the name Osama bin Laden. The only problem for Mr. Cheney, apparently, is that he is a firm believer in gun control for himself. Now, how can BuzzFlash make this outrageous claim? Well, easy. All the NRA gun guys who wanted to hear Mr. Cheney speak about God and Guns and Freedom and the evils of Gun Control had to leave their guns in their hotel rooms and go through metal detectors, among other screening procedures, before they could gain entry to the meeting hall where Cheney addressed them. In short, if you were an NRA member and wanted to hear Cheney, you had to go through gun control. In fact, security screening for Cheney started three hours in advance of his NRA speech. So, Dick Cheney tells the NRA members gun control is bad for America, but is apparently good enough for him. Excuse us, but we want some of what Cheney gets: you know, the treatment where the gun guys can't be in the same room with us while packing heat. If it's good enough for Cheney, it's good enough for BuzzFlash! I mean Cheney is making sure that Tom DeLay doesn't reauthorize the so-called Assault Weapons Ban of 1994, which is up for renewal this year. We say so-called "Assault Weapons Ban" because -- despite its name -- and in spite of what most Americans believe, it is really only a modest restriction on some specific makes of assault weapons. It's probably better than nothing, but a long, long way from a full ban on assault weapons. In fact, the gun industry quickly figured out a way to get around the so-called ban in 1994 and has manufactured loads of assault weapons with slight modifications to evade the law since that time. So the Assault Weapons Ban of 1994 that comes up for renewal in September of this year is not really an Assault Weapons Ban; it's a modest effort at limited regulation. And the gun industry, to the detriment of our police officers and citizens, has, by and large, circumvented the 1994 law. Yet, Bush, who knew that a real, full assault weapons ban is supported by 70% of the American public, promised to support renewal of the modest, now outdated, 1994 bill in order to win over suburban women's votes in 2000. In reality, he doesn't want the bill anywhere near his desk in 2004, even though both sides of the debate know that it's not really a full assault weapons ban at all, which is what Americans REALLY support and think that they got in 1994. So, if you are following this, which confuses even us at times, Cheney let the NRA know with a wink and a nod that the Bush/Cheney administration is just fine with assault weapons flooding the streets, and will oppose limited restrictions, let alone a full ban. The odd thing though is that the NRA members, mostly older white males, are more psychologically attached to a whole range of issues beyond just guns. Guns are just the symbolic edge of a psychosocial mindset. In one article, a journalist observed a man at the Pittsburgh convention wearing a T-shirt that had emblazoned on it: "Christian, American, heterosexual, pro-gun, conservative. Any questions?" [LINK] That about says it all, doesn't it? Awhile back, BuzzFlash interviewed a University of California at Berkeley Linguistics Professor, George Lakoff, who talked about how hardcore Republican men are attracted to the "patriarchal family model," [LINK] and we inferred that George W. Bush can get away with lying and failure, because that is what is allowed the father in a traditional patriarchal family. Maybe the vernacular way of stating this is, "George W. Bush may be a lying, dumb F***-Up, but Laura still walks two steps behind him, and he's still head of his family and the country, and that's the way it should be for a white male. That's our entitlement." In short, the screwed-up son of privilege has been converted to "the father knows best role model" for the psychologically disenfranchised fraternity of white males. Are we getting too heavy for you yet? So even though there has been an onslaught of books and revelations lately that have revealed that Bush is a chronic liar, a dimwit, an arrogant elitist (repackaged by Rove as a faux "cultural values populist"), an ineffective commander in chief, a loser at wars, a man whose flawed leadership has resulted in hundreds of our soldiers dying and thousands being wounded, a pick-pocketer of the middle class, a child of affirmative action for slow-brained WASP offspring, and a ruthlessly vindictive S.O.B. to boot, the embattled white male contingent considers him an honorable man. That is apparently why Kayne B. Robinson, President of the NRA, could tell the assembled NRA members in Pittsburgh, with a straight face, "Don't you just love being able to say the word `president' and not be ashamed by what comes after that?" [LINK] When Bob Woodward, in his new book, asks Bush how he will feel history will judge him in light of a failed war in Iraq and not finding WMD's, Bush responded, "History, we don’t know. We’ll all be dead." Well, at least Cheney will still be alive. He's got the Secret Service and gun control to protect him. A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL | ||||||
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