# Harry Whittington is sorry for Dick Cheney's troubles
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harry-whittington-is-sorry-for-dick-cheneys-troubles/344985
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Created:** [February 17, 2006, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harry-whittington-is-sorry-for-dick-cheneys-troubles/344985 "2006-02-17T19:19:00Z")
**Posts on this page:** 10
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Orbifold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Orbifold)
#### Post date: [February 17, 2006, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harry-whittington-is-sorry-for-dick-cheneys-troubles/344985/1 "2006-02-17T19:19:00Z")
True. Mr., Whittington, having been released from the hospital, [said](http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/02/17/cheney/index.html):
> [@](#):
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> “My family and I are deeply sorry for all that Vice President Cheney and his family have had to go through this week,”
The man who was shot in the face…is sorry for the trouble that the shooter went through.
The world has gone mad.
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### Author:  [@MLS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MLS)
#### Post date: [February 17, 2006, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harry-whittington-is-sorry-for-dick-cheneys-troubles/344985/2 "2006-02-17T20:47:40Z")
What I don’t know is what color clothing he was wearing or whether he was acting in accordance with normal safety rules or not. He may simply be saying he was partially to blame, although Mr. Chaney has taken full responsibility.
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### Author:  [@thursday\_next](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thursday_next)
#### Post date: [February 17, 2006, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harry-whittington-is-sorry-for-dick-cheneys-troubles/344985/3 "2006-02-17T21:02:05Z")
According to [this](http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,185238,00.html) article on Fox News.
> [@](#):
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> everyone was wearing the proper hunting attire of blaze orange," reported Kenedy County Sheriff’s Department Chief Deputy Gilberto San Miguel Jr.
I was amazed at the pure chutzpah of Cheney referring to it as
> [@](#):
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> one of the worst days of my life.
Can anyone think of someone who _might_ have had a worse day?
I am glad that the poor guy’s getting to leave the hospital. Too bad he looks like death warmed over.
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### Author:  [@lieu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lieu)
#### Post date: [February 17, 2006, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harry-whittington-is-sorry-for-dick-cheneys-troubles/344985/4 "2006-02-17T21:08:48Z")
Saying “You’re sorry” about something does not necessarily mean you’re offering an apology. I think what Mr. Whittington is trying to say is that he and Cheney are long time friends, he knows the incident has been very agonizing for Mr. Cheney and he hates to see his friend suffering as well.
It’s not a comparrison or anything like that. It’s just a classy statement of concern one friend has made about another.
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### Author:  [@Orbifold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Orbifold)
#### Post date: [February 17, 2006, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harry-whittington-is-sorry-for-dick-cheneys-troubles/344985/5 "2006-02-17T21:25:23Z")
> [@lieu](#):
>
> Saying “You’re sorry” about something does not necessarily mean you’re offering an apology. I think what Mr. Whittington is trying to say is that he and Cheney are long time friends, he knows the incident has been very agonizing for Mr. Cheney and he hates to see his friend suffering as well.
>
> It’s not a comparrison or anything like that. It’s just a classy statement of concern one friend has made about another.
Saying it was an accident, that he doesn’t hold Cheney responsible, that he’d gladly go out hunting with Cheney again (all of which he did say in the video, if memory serves)…that’s classy. Saying that he’s sorry for Cheney’s troubles, when _he’s_ the one who was in the hospital for nearly a week and had a minor heart attack from embedded shotgun pellets…that goes through “classy” and out the other side, dangerously close to the realm of “doormat”.
Not trying to flame Cheney _or_ Whittington here, but if there’s one time in your life when you can and should be focused solely on your own well-being…you’d think that just after being shot in the face would be that time.
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### Author:  [@lieu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lieu)
#### Post date: [February 17, 2006, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harry-whittington-is-sorry-for-dick-cheneys-troubles/344985/6 "2006-02-17T21:56:10Z")
> [@thursday next](#):
>
> I was amazed at the pure chutzpah of Cheney referring to it as
>
> > [@](#):
> >
> > one of the worst days of my life.
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> Can anyone think of someone who _might_ have had a worse day?
I see this sentiment a lot. Can someone offer a better suggestion as to how he should have phrased it? It’s not like he said he had a worse day than Whittington. He didn’t presume to speak for them both as say it was the worst for the two of them. In fact, that expression was I thought kind of an accepted way of describing something positively awful by a pretty fair number of people.
I’m just curious because if I ever need to express a like sentiment, I’d like to insure beforehand it won’t be held up as evidence of my lack of compassion or overabundance of chutzpah.
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### Author:  [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)
#### Post date: [February 17, 2006, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harry-whittington-is-sorry-for-dick-cheneys-troubles/344985/7 "2006-02-17T22:03:09Z")
> [@thursday next](#):
>
> I was amazed at the pure chutzpah of Cheney referring to it as [“one of the worst days of my life”]
>
> Can anyone think of someone who _might_ have had a worse day?
Huh? What’s the connection?
If I come in second place at a pie-eating contest, I can still say “That was the most pie I’ve eaten in a single sitting in my entire life,” even if the 1st place glutton ate twice as much as I did.
If I shot a friend in the face, it would easily be the _worst_ day of my life, because I can’t think of anything that bad that’s ever happened to me.
That doesn’t mean that I think my day was worse than the one the guy I shot had.
What do you expect him to say? “Yeah, I shot him. No skin off my nose, but man, it sucks to be _him._”
Anyway, one thing I know is that everytime I see the words “Dick” and “Whittington” so close together, it makes me think of the fairy tale, and I think, “Dick! Whittington’s scattershot!”
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### Author:  [@brianjedi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brianjedi)
#### Post date: [February 17, 2006, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harry-whittington-is-sorry-for-dick-cheneys-troubles/344985/8 "2006-02-17T22:04:21Z")
> [@thursday next](#):
>
> According to [this](http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,185238,00.html) article on Fox News.
>
> I was amazed at the pure chutzpah of Cheney referring to it as
>
> Can anyone think of someone who _might_ have had a worse day?
>
> I am glad that the poor guy’s getting to leave the hospital. Too bad he looks like death warmed over.
Someone made a joke on Opie & Anthony yesterday that the worst day of his life was probably when he found out his daughter was a lesbian.
I doubt that’s true, but when you think about the usual relationship between the Republican Party and gay people, it’s a little funny.
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### Author:  [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)
#### Post date: [February 17, 2006, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harry-whittington-is-sorry-for-dick-cheneys-troubles/344985/9 "2006-02-17T22:05:06Z")
Or, what \*\*lieu \*\* said.
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### Author:  [@eleanorigby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eleanorigby)
#### Post date: [February 17, 2006, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harry-whittington-is-sorry-for-dick-cheneys-troubles/344985/10 "2006-02-17T22:30:16Z")
To me, the “worst day of my life” excludes the hurt party. If the groom dies at the alter, the bride may well say that that is the worst day of her life, but it pales in comparison to the dead guy’s.
Same thing here. It may well have been DICK’s worst day (barring his daughter coming out or Clinton still living) but it’s nothing to what Whittington went thru.
DICK was on the wrong end of the gun to express his remorse that way.
IMO, if he had said, " This was the worst day of my life; I’ll never forget it. I cannot imagine what Harry and his family are going thru and I want to make it as right as I can.", that’d be different. He said none of those things. It’s all about him and his feelings–Harry’s not even mentioned in his statement. He could also have said, “I need to take a refresher course in gun safety, since I have such a public position and prominence in this country, I will act as a role model for all hunters and promote gun and hunting safety.” but he didn’t say that either.