Cheney dresses dog as Darth Vader, report says John Byrne

Published: Thursday November 1, 2007



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Print This Email This Dick Cheney doesn't have to shoot anyone. He just has to ask his dog to take them out with a lightsaber. According to ABC News, the Vice President dressed (or had someone dress) one of his dogs in a Darth Vader costume in a nod to comedian's frequent comparisons between himself and the fallen Jedi with stertorous breath.

Photo via ABC News. The vice president who once led President George W. Bush's search committee to pick a vice president and ultimately decided upon himself, has entered the political lexicon for frequent comparisons. Wikipedia has an entire paragraph. "On June 22, 2006 U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney called himself the Darth Vader of the Bush administration," the entry states. "Discussing the need to vigorously pursue intelligence, he said to CNN's John King, "It means we need to be able to go after and capture or kill those people who are trying to kill Americans. That's not a pleasant business. It's a very serious business. And I suppose, sometimes, people look at my demeanor and say, well, he's the Darth Vader of the administration." Notes Wikipedia dryly, "Vader's name has become a synonym for evil." The entry continues: "Jon Stewart put on a Darth Vader helmet to 'talk' to Dick Cheney as a 'kindred spirit' on The Daily Show on January 25, 2007. Cheney's wife Lynne presented Stewart with a Darth Vader action figure on her appearance on the show on October 10, 2007. Both Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have referred to Cheney as 'Darth Cheney' on occasion. In the satiric cartoon show Lil' Bush, Dick Cheney's father is portrayed as being Darth Vader." President George W. Bush joked Wednesday that Vice President Dick Cheney, sometimes caricatured as Darth Vader, did not need a costume to play the sinister "Star Wars" villain for Halloween. Bush's jibe came as some of the candidates vying to succeed him as president put their own spin on Halloween, and a Senate Foreign Relations hearing was spooked by a "double" of chairman Senator Joseph Biden. The President enjoyed his jibe at Cheney, who is derided by critics as a malevolent behind-the-scenes influence in US politics. "This morning I was with the vice president. I was asking him what costume he was planning. And he said 'I'm already wearing it.' Then he mumbled something about 'the dark side of the Force,'" Bush quipped. Cheney himself has repeatedly joked publicly about his portrayal as the black-armored Dark Lord of the Sith, most recently in an October 21 speech to the Washington Institute for Near East policy. "I've been asked if that nickname bothers me, and the answer is, no. After all, Darth Vader is one of the nicer things I've been called recently," the vice president said. It was unclear whether Bush or Cheney's pop-culture knowledge included the fact that, at the end of the saga, Vader redeems himself and saves his son by hurling the evil emperor Palpatine to his death, at the cost of his own life. Even Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) recently joined the bandwagon. In September, Clinton told a New York fundraising crowd, "You can always tell when the Republicans are restless -- because the Vice President's motorcade pulls into the Capitol. Darth Vader emerges. And honestly I'm not invited to their meetings I don't know what he says or does."

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