Former vice president and torture hype man Dick Cheney has reportedly died at the age of 84. And while summaries of Cheney’s legacy should probably focus on the millions of people who died as the result of his actions, we would also like to briefly point out that he used to be a recurring character on Saturday Night Live, thanks to Darrell Hammond’s snarling impression.
Cheney didn’t exactly seem like the kind of guy who was capable of chuckling at himself, or for that matter, cracking a non-villainous smile of any kind. So it may surprise you to know that he once hired Hammond for a private event – of course, he didn’t want Hammond to do the Cheney impersonation, instead, he hired the SNL star to make fun of one of Cheney’s political enemies.
As Hammond told CNN back in 2002, he had recently been invited “to a Republican retreat with Vice President Dick Cheney, who asked him to portray former President Clinton.”
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“I’m not sure what that was all about,” Hammond claimed at the time. “But that’s what they wanted, and we’re always flattered when one of the most powerful people in the world wants us to come and hang around a little bit, so I went as Clinton.”
Obviously Hammond played Bill Clinton quite a lot, but in 2002, he was far more likely to be seen on SNL riding a missile dressed as Cheney than pretending to be Clinton. Enlisting the nation’s chief Cheney impersonator to play a Democratic punching bag for Republicans to dunk on seems like a weirdly intense power move, in retrospect. This would be like Donald Trump bringing James Austin Johnson to the White House purely in order to rip on Joe Biden.
As The Washington Post noted in ‘02, the “policy retreat” was held at Greenbrier resort in West Virginia. Hammond apparently did the gig as a “freebie” but noted that he was open to doing a show for the Democrats.
“Vice President Cheney, Senate Republican leader Trent Lott (Miss.) and House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (Ill.) and their wives were on stage as New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg introduced ‘his constituent from Harlem,’” the Post reported. Of course, that constituent turned out to be Hammond “in full Clinton make-up.”
“I promise not to say anything that could excite the vice president too much,” Hammond-as-Clinton told the Republicans, “because of the stress it could cause him. Every time he laughs, 100 garage doors in Wheeling go up and down.”
Presumably jokes about war crimes were off the table.
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