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Vice President Dick Cheney had a day of hunting at the Clove Valley Rod & Gun Club in upstate New York - and no one was hurt. However, there is a storm brewing over the fact that a Confederate flag was hanging in a garage on the property.
While everyone was joking that Cheney might accidentally shoot a hunting companion, the way he did in February 2006, in the face, his trip was pretty uneventful. He flew in on Sunday night, staying at the Courtyard by Marriott in Poughkeepsie (government discount, we bet!). He spent eight hours at the club and left NY State around 3:45PM. Who knew that second-in-commands got Mondays off?
But then a Daily New photographer took a picture of a Confederate flag hanging at the club. When informed of this, the Reverend Al Sharpton said, "I call on Vice President Cheney to leave immediately, denounce the club, and apologize for going to a club that represents lynching, hate and murder to black people." The VP's spokesperson said that Cheney and his staff did not see the flag.
The News says that the photographer, Howard Simmons, was threatened with arrest when he asked the club for comment. Simmons himself explained to the Poughkeepsie Journal, "The garage was open, and hanging on the rear of the door was the Confederate flag." He did say the garage door could have been closed when Cheney was there.
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I don't know how it worked for this one, but some of Cheney's past hunts are total jokes - workers release birds in front of the hunting party so Cheney is pretty much guaranteed to shoot some.
Yes, the Confederate flag is a symbol of racism. But really? this is some nosy photographer trying to make something out of nothing. Plus, maybe the gun club aer fans of the Dukes of Hazzard.
I guess the right Reverend doesn't go to too many stock car races down south. I'd like to see him stand in the middle of the track at the start of the race and say something to the people down there about confederate flags.
Sharpton, have a nice big cup of STFU!
Is anyone surprised that Cheney isn't offended by the confederate flag? He is the devil, people. The devil embodies and represents all evil. Of course the devil is racist.
God I hate Cheney.
As much as I hate Cheney, I hate Sharpton mostest.
http://imsorryalsharpton.com/
But then a Daily New photographer took a picture of a Confederate flag hanging at the club. When informed of this, the Reverend Al Sharpton said, "I call on Vice President Cheney to leave immediately, denounce the club, and apologize for going to a club that represents lynching, hate and murder to black people."
Wait, what?
Not that I support the Confederate Flag and that for which it stands (in the historic and contemporary contexts) but I think Mr. Sharpton is a little confused. Is it the club or is it the Confederate Flag that represents these things?
Sharpton may be self-aggrandizing and annoyingly shrill, but the person most likely to make baby jesus cry is Dick Cheney.
^ No way man. Sharpton sucks WAAAAAAAAY more than Dick "Emperor Palpatine" Cheney. Sharpton is actually TRYING to keep blacks down.
Why doesn't Bill Cosby just beat up Al Sharpton and make the world a better place to live.
Hunting - always classy.
^Call me when Sharpton starts lobbying to begin an unprovoked war, wants to decimate congress, and hating on civil liberties. Then, you know, I'll agree with you.
Someone call the grammar slammer, that response was atrocious!
This is Dick Cheney we are talking about people. It wouldn't shock me to find out that he eats puppies for breakfast.
At least he wasn't hunting peasants.
Jibbly,
In response to this comment:
"Call me when Sharpton starts lobbying to begin an unprovoked war, wants to decimate congress, and hating on civil liberties. Then, you know, I'll agree with you."
Kudos.
The Confederate battle flag should not be automatically considered a hate symbol (and neither should nooses). In many contexts it is, but without some context, one should not rush to judgment.
Dick Cheney is a cynical and contemptible politician whose contempt for truth and civil liberties will put him in the ash heap of history. Those things apply to Al Sharpton as well.
Wait a minute. Wasn't Al Sharpton the protege of James Brown?
Who was Dick Cheney's mentor?
to Polite New Yorker:
while you may be correct about the flag... you say nooses should not be automatically considered a hate symbol.... really?!
what exactly are some of the non-hateful contexts of a noose, pray tell?
In some contexts a noose can be a hate symbol, such as when it's put on the office door of a black professor whose focus is racial issues. But for the most part, the noose is a symbol of a certain method of execution that has been employed across all cultural and racial lines. Indeed many blacks (and whites) were lynched by violent mobs that employed nooses. The noose was also the method of execution used on Nazi war criminals and Saddam Hussein.
The British, before they got rid of the death penalty, decided that hanging was the least offensive and most civilized of all the methods of execution. Is one to doubt the British in proper etiquette?
The Confederate flag is not synonymous with hatred. It was the flag used by the south during the war of secession and that war had very little to do with the hatred of the blacks, it had more to do with state versus federal rights. If anything the freed blacks in the north were more hated because they were taking jobs away from the recently imported Irish.
Al Sharpton has been planted as a Black leader in order to dissuade whites from believing/supporting certain urban issues, and to mislead most blind Black to follow him ignorantly.
Jesse Jackson, Charlie Rangel, they're all PLANTS/SPIES for the "man".