NPR's Chicago-based weekend game show Wait! Wait! Don't Tell Me! appeared in Portland, Oregon this weekend, and once again, host Peter Sagal laid into Dick Cheney. (Five years ago, we reported Sagal suggested Cheney was living in Karl Rove's rear end, or last November, Sagal's fake book interview with George W. Bush that made him sound like he's relapsed into alcoholism.)
Rather typically, the NPR game show host picked up the liberal meme of the week and mocked how GOP debate audiences are "really excited about death, either by execution or untreated illness." Then he mocked Cheney as the Grim Reaper, and guest panelist Peter Grosz (recently a writer for The Colbert Report) suggested "that is unfair to the Grim Reaper."
SAGAL: So one thing you may might have noticed if you've been watching the GOP presidential debates so far is that the audience really more than any of the candidates is really excited about death, either by execution or untreated illness. This week, the crowd applauded and someone shouted "yeah!" when Wolf Blitzer asked Ron Paul if society should let a hypothetical man without health insurance just die. Although, to be fair, it was just one guy who shouted that, and he turned out to be somebody who was rear ended by a hypothetical man on the way to the debate. So he was angry. (Laughter)
SAGAL: At the last debate, the crowd cheered for the amount of people Rick Perry had executed as governor of Texas.
ROY BLOUNT: Right.
SAGAL: Romney, you know Romney, he's seeing what voters wanted. He went right to the pander. He announced his running mate. It'll be Romney/Grim Reaper 2012. (Laughter) Hey, it worked for George Bush. (Laughter, then applause).
PETER GROSZ: That is -- that is unfair to the Grim Reaper. (Laughter)
GROSZ: How dare you.
SAGAL: How dare you.
GROSZ: That man has a family. (Laughter)
ROXANNE ROBERTS: And a heart.
GROSZ: Yeah, and a heart. (Laughter) Yeah, he's got his own heart.
SAGAL: The crowds at the GOP debates have been attracting more attention than any of the candidates. Maybe they should get the nomination. You know, everybody please rise for President Angry Mob.
Liberals think they have all the compassion, and yet somehow they still enjoy joking on the radio about the diseased state of Dick Cheney's heart.
