HOW TO SHOOT FRIENDS

WHEN VICE PRESIDENT Dick Cheney accidentally
shot a friend of his in the face during a weekend quail
hunt in 2006, he created an easy target for satire. At the
White House Correspondents’ Dinner in 2009, President
Obama quipped that Cheney was “very busy working on
his memoirs, tentatively titled How to Shoot Friends and
Interrogate People.” Barry Blitt took his own potshots at
Cheney in this sketch (right) and published cover (far right).

NO MATTER HOW INSPIRING
the topic, only one image can be pub-
lished every week, and we chose Mark
Ulriksen’s twist on the poster for the film
Brokeback Mountain, which had recently
been released (left). Also in contention
were two variants proposed by Barry Blitt
(above and opposite), both showing the
vice president blithely maiming every-
thing and everyone around him. For such
a powerful figure as Cheney, the best
comedy arose from seeing him misuse an
innocuous prop like a TV remote, rather
than showing him wounding the Statue
of Liberty. For some, that would have felt
too close to the truth.

50