Cheney's Funny Side

Vice president Dick Cheney finds himself having to apologize for remarks about the incestuous leanings of the people of West Virginia: “So we had Cheneys on both sides of the family — and we don’t even live in West Virginia. […] You can say these things when you’re not running for re-election.” Quite predictably, various West Virginia politicians, including the state's governor and its venerable senior U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd, blasted the vice president for his attempt at humor. Now racial and ethnic stereotypes are, on their face, grossly unfair to members of the group in question and should be condemned. However, my reaction to Cheney's joke is necessarily tempered by the West Virginia voters in the recent Democratic presidential primary who threw their support overwhelmingly to Hillary Clinton, and many of whom in exit polls openly admitted that they did so because they could not vote for Obama on the basis of skin color. Funny, West Virginia's political establishment did not seem to get all worked up over those statements.