| | Daily Show: Darth Vader wants Cheney analogies to stop
Host renames Cheney segment, 'Why Are You Such A Dick?'
 Jon Stewart may have just ended a cultural meme.
Comparisons of former Vice President Dick Cheney and Star Wars villain Darth Vader, who led the evil galactic empire as the emperor's right hand, abound on the Internet.
But it's not just the netizens who are fond of the likening. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as a Senator from New York in 2007, told a Times Square town hall meeting, "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."
Even Cheney once joked about analogies between he and the cinema baddie, noting at a 2008 Republican fundraiser, "I asked my wife, Lynne, the other day, 'But doesn't that bother you?' And she said, 'No, it humanizes you.'"
In responding to the media storm that descended after Cheney's Tuesday Politico interview -- his first since Obama's inauguration -- Stewart announced a name change for one of his program's popular recurring segments.
It seems after Cheney claimed that preventing hundreds of thousands of American deaths from a large-scale terrorism attack will be difficult without maintaining the Bush administration's policies -- saying, "Whether or not they can pull it off depends whether or not we keep in place policies that have allowed us to defeat all further attempts, since 9/11, to launch mass-casualty attacks against the United States" -- he'd gone just too far for Stewart.
In honor of "his glibness," Comedy Central's Daily Show, its host feeling now-citizen Dick Cheney not worthy of "cute" mockery, changed the title of the reappearing segment from "You Don't Know Dick" to "Why Are You Such A Dick?"
"Over the years, we have tried very hard to make Dick Cheney look evil, but in kind of a cute way," Stewart said. "Kinda, funny, cartoonish, lot of Darth Vader jokes, funny pictures, man sized safe, and then we did that funny wheelchair mock-up."
As he trailed away, the audio cued up a rendition of composer John Williams' 'The Imperial March' from George Lucas' film The Empire Strikes Back.
"In fact, do you know how big a dick he now is?" Stewart continued. "This was the message that I recently got on my answering machine."
Stewart's answering machine beeped, and after a greeting by song, the Dark Lord of the Sith began his message.
"Hello John," Vader said. "Please, stop comparing me to Dick Cheney. I redeemed myself, remember? Saving Luke from the Emperor?"
R2D2, the prolific Star Wars robotic companion to both characters Skywalker, chimed in with a series of beeps.
"I'll be right there, honey," Vader said. "But seriously. Stop comparing me to Dick Cheney!"
This video is from Comedy Central's The Daily Show, broadcast Feb. 5, 2009.
Download video via RawReplay.com
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