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CHENEY REACTIONDate: March 16, 2003 Page: D10 Section: EditorialPOLITICIANS should never go after a humorist. Things will only get funnier. They should remember what happened to Dan Quayle when he took a swipe at the television character Murphy Brown: The show's writers turned him into a half-hour joke. They should take a copy of the recent letter Vice President Cheney's lawyer wrote to satirist John Wooden and hang it on their walls with a big red circle and slash mark through it, perhaps including the words: No Pomposity. The letter, of course, is now displayed on Wooden's website, "Whitehouse.org" - a parody of the Bush administration's "Whitehouse.gov." And lawyer David Addington's stern legalese demanding that Wooden remove the send-up of Lynne Cheney from the site's collection of satirical biographies has been answered with a bold home page link directly to the spoof and a big clown nose and blackened teeth on Mrs. Cheney's photo. In addition, Wooden has crafted an "Important Legal Notice" telling visitors that "Mrs. Cheney's husband wishes you to be aware that some/all of the biographic information contained on this parody page about Mrs. Cheney may not actually be true." There is also a fictitious statement from the vice president calling the website a "terror portal." It goes on, and probably will for weeks, because once again, Washington has taken itself way too seriously - or at least one lawyer has. Cheney's press officer says that neither the vice president nor his wife was aware the lawyerly letter had been written. Addington was probably unaware that he looked like a "Saturday Night Live" skit sending vice presidential letterhead to a place called "Chickenhead Productions Inc." in Brooklyn, N.Y. He attacks Wooden for using Lynne Cheney "for purposes of trade without her written consent" when the website is free and she is one of many Bush associates satirized. If his point is that she is the only one on the site not in public life, he doesn't say so - and the argument is weak given her background as former head of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Addington's letter cites relatively obscure New York state case law while ignoring rulings of the US Supreme Court - and insists that Wooden stop displaying "the seal of the president," which is plainly a mock emblem featuring a vulture instead of an eagle. "We consider the matter closed," said Jennifer Millerwise in the vice president's press office. But Christopher Dunn, who took up Wooden's cause at the New York office of the American Civil Liberties Union, would like to see that in writing with assurances of no future action against the site. Here's hoping the matter fades into an old joke rather than a stack of legal briefs - and that Washington finally gets the punch line.
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