That Time Dick Cheney Shot His Friend in the Face; and Why Daytime Dramas are Called 'Soap Operas'
It happened on February 11, 2006, while then-sitting Vice President Dick Cheney and a few friends and family members were on a quail hunt at a Ranch in south Texas.
Not much detail about the event itself is public record, but, the story goes that, while the 78-year-old victim of the shooting, long-time Republican Party politico Harry Whittington, was retrieving a downed bird from an open clearing some distance away from the main party, Cheney unknowingly took aim at a group of quails that had taken flight beside him.
The official accident report from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department read:
‘Another covey was flushed and Cheney swung on a bird and fired, striking Whittington in the face, neck and chest at approximately 30 yards.’
He was immediately rushed to a nearby hospital where he underwent surgery to remove the pellets and repair a lung they’d collapsed on impact. In and of themselves, the wounds weren’t life threatening, but Whittington nearly died on the table after suffering a heart attack during the procedure. Thankfully, his doctors were able to stabilize him before he suffered any permanent heart, lung, or brain damage.
Here’s the link to today’s Daily game:
Understandably, Cheney and his team weren’t eager to draw attention to the incident, and so didn’t report it to either the police or the press even after they’d gotten word that Whittington was going to be fine. It was only after the namesake owner of the ranch, Katherine Armstrong, got in touch with the Corpus Christi Caller-Times the following day that the media finally got a hold of the story.
Within just a few hours, White House press secretary Scott McClellan was being grilled by a room full of hostile reporters about what exactly happened, and why no one from the administration made it public before it ultimately leaked.
Why Daytime Dramas are Called ‘Soap Operas’
The earliest form of the daytime drama began on radio in the 1930s when national stations started airing serial programs in 15-minute segments, with the acts separated by ad breaks. Each episode would always pick up where the previous one had left off - typically on a kind of cliffhanger, although that term as we use it today hadn’t yet been coined.
Because men made up the bulk of American workforce back then, the audience for these shows was almost entirely made up of women, and particularly young housewives who stayed inside all afternoon performing the stereotypical homemaking duties of the era: cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, etc. Naturally, the advertisers for these shows specifically, and unambiguously targeted that demographic. The largest and most notable of these opportunistic companies was Proctor & Gamble, which almost exclusively ran ads for their cleaning products, particularly soaps and detergents.
By the time they’d made the transition from the radio to TV in the middle of the 1950s, the daytime serial had become synonymous with their advertisers, giving rise to the enduring moniker: ‘soap opera.’
P&G wasn’t just an advertiser, though. They also created and produced dozens of these kinds of serials from the early 1930s all the way through the late 2000s.
Their first major hit was Ma Perkins, which first hit the air in 1933, but its success has since been completely overshadowed by that of P&G’s premiere shows: Guiding Light and As the World Turns, which ran from 1937-2010, and 1956-2010, respectively. The former holds the perhaps forever untouchable record for the longest continuously broadcast scripted series in the history of American television.
Although P&G no longer produces their own original soap operas, which often featured Seinfeld levels of product placement, it remains an official sponsor of The Young and the Restless, which has been on the air since 1973.
Despite the vice president absolutely being at fault for the accident - so said the aforementioned report from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department - it was Harry Whittington who ultimately apologized to Cheney. First, at least. As he was leaving the hospital a week after the accident, Whittington told a crowd of reporters:
‘We all assume certain risks in whatever we do, whatever activities we pursue. And regardless of how experienced, careful and dedicated we are… accidents do and will happen…. My family and I are deeply sorry for all that Vice President Cheney and his family have had to go through this past week.’
Cheney reciprocated not long after in a somber Fox News interview:
‘It was one of the worst days of my life… I’m the guy who pulled the trigger and shot my friend… You can't blame anybody else.’
Whittington thankfully ended up making a full recovery, and after he got back on his feet, continued to work as the high powered figure in Texas politics he’d been for the previous few decades. Though he never held any elected office, he was a big part of George W. Bush’s first successful campaign for Congress in 1978, and was later an advocate for prison reform in his state, serving on the Texas Board of Corrections to improve conditions for inmates in the 80s and 90s. Even still, just about every obituary written for him after he passed on February 4, 2023 - almost 17 years to the day of the shooting - focused primarily on the hunting accident. Deserved or not, it’s without question what he’s best known for.
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