Know Your Sith Lords

Dick Cheney said that his critics think he's Darth Vader. Certainly not. Lord Vader was once a good person. A more appropriate Sith Lord comparison would be to one who used fear and lies to boost himself a level of power that was nearly despotic: Darth Sidious. I realize that this analogy is imperfect as well. Sidious had, at least, a superficial charm. While I can accuse Cheney of a great deal, unctuousness and smarm have never been among his crimes. Cheney is a taciturn, charmless killer, and a more apt movie villain analog for him might be Karl Stromberg from The Spy Who Loved Me or Jame Gumb from The Silence of the Lambs, but, as long as we're playing in George Lucas's ballpark, Darth Sidious will have to do.

As for George W. Bush, well, he doesn't get to be Lord Vader either. Whenever someone failed Vader, Vader killed him. Bush keeps promoting his incompetents. Maybe we can cast Bush as one of those Trade Federation guys that Vader wipes out in Revenge of the Sith. They were malicious, vain, ignorant, and given to trusting the wrong people. If we could leave Lucas behind, and if Bush developed better taste in clothes, we might just be able to compare Bush to Brett Easton Ellis's Patrick Bateman. ("I like to torture Arabs. Do you know I'm utterly insane?")

Or maybe Bush is Max Cady or maybe...

This is making me sad.