Joe Klein Jumps The Shark

That’s the shark.

I despair often of my Beltway brethren. Most of the time, I feel it’s time to march most of them out of Washington forcibly and intern them in a work camp and re-education center somewhere in the northern Smoky Mountains.

But that’s just me.

Occasionally, however, one comes upon such a perfect fractal symptom of the overall contagion that it seems more than worth it to start building rude huts and stocking farm implements for the eventual inmate population. Peggy Noonan and her magic dolphins were one such pustulating example a few years back. Howard Fineman on Bush’s comfort in denim and ermine, or whatever the hell he was talking about, was another. And now we have this.

Sweet mother Mary, Dick Cheney performing for Brit Hume and GUYS IN VIETNAM? An aging corporate carnivore downing beers and stalking farm-raised game, and some poor young guy drafted out of Butcher Holler and dropped into a jungle kill zone? Dick Cheney, as a boomer, learning the lessons of An Loc on the killing fields of some plutocrat’s toy wilderness? And being sadder and wiser for the experience? And Bob Kerrey, who’s said enough flaky stuff in his day to take a job with Kellogg’s, chiming in with some look-there’s-a-unicorn psychedelia about how this may make Cheney “have a better sense” of what he’s asked other people’s children to endure? What kind of mushrooms do they serve in the dining hall at The New School anyway?