Everyone’s talking about this, and it is indeed quite amusing:
Richard K. Armey, the group’s chairman and a former House majority leader, walked into the group’s Capitol Hill offices with his wife, Susan, and an aide holstering a handgun at his waist. The aim was to seize control of the group and expel Armey’s enemies: The gun-wielding assistant escorted FreedomWorks’ top two employees off the premises, while Armey suspended several others who broke down in sobs at the news.
g
What was the plan, you have to wonder? Go into the office and tell employees they have to leave….and if they don’t you shoot them?
ranchandsyrup
I miss Biggie. Sad face.
Tara the Antisocial Social Worker
Do you suppose it just completely warps a person’s mind to be named “Dick Armey”?
beth
Really? I’ve fired people and never felt the need to do it at gunpoint. What kind of people are working there that Armey felt like he needed to be packing heat to get rid of them? I swear, guns really are their answer to every problem.
Brachiator
@Tara the Antisocial Social Worker:
True story. Dick Van Dyke’s real name is P@nis van L@sbian.
OK, just kidding.
Dick Armey, Dick Van Dyke, Peter O’Toole, Oral Roberts, and Rip Torn could form a crazy ass name support group.
ETA: Got moderated. Oh, well, let’s see if this eventually shows up.
GregB
How soon until the GOP and the tea-partiers co-opt the Hezbollah flag and replace the AK with an AR?
The political right is fast developing into an armed militia.
PeakVT
The aim was to seize control of the group and expel Armey’s enemies:
The Free Market of Ideas at work!
Ruckus
@Tara the Antisocial Social Worker:
My guess is being a conservative would be a lot more harmful. Or maybe he has been taking his name seriously as he is a dick. Although I know others named Richard who go by Dick and they aren’t dicks. Maybe some people just are… dicks.
The Ancient Randonneur
With a name like that and a plot like that it sounds like the makings of a great p0rn movie–
Teabagging starring Dick Armey!
MattF
Also, a development in the story about the high-capacity clip shown on Meet The Press:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/police-nbc-asked-for-high-capacity-clip/2012/12/26/4c8f77da-4f76-11e2-8b49-64675006147f_story.html?hpid=z3
Turns out, NBC asked the police if they could show a high-capacity clip on their show, and the police said “No.” So, as ever, laws are for the ‘little people’.
Tara the Antisocial Social Worker
It’s so unfair that Stewart & Colbert are on vacation this week. 24 karat comedy gold.
Napoleon
So David Gregory shows a gun magazine on his show (I assume without ammo in it) and the police open an investigagtion, while Armey’s people entering an office armed has not, to our knowledge (both were in DC).
Jewish Steel
Isn’t this pretty much how you became a FPer around here, Doug?
Amir Khalid
If violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, like Isaac Asimov said, then I guess bringing a weapon is their penultimate refuge.
Tara the Antisocial Social Worker
@Ruckus: Combining it with “Armey” just seemed a little over the top.
Especially since he’s the one who called Barney Frank “Barney Fag.”
Peregrinus
It only gets truer: the bigger an asshole you are, the more surprised you are when someone else is an asshole to you.
Hillary Rettig
“You and what Dick Armey?”
Xenos
The article reads like a really crazy issue-spotting exam covering tax law, crim, corporate and employment law. Yike, I would not even know where to begin, but I am sure that prosecuters could be quite interested in the show-up-at- work-with-a-gun- and-frog-march-your-bosses- out-of-the-place part of the story.
Villago Delenda Est
This is how you deal with guys like Dick Armey.
Napoleon
@MattF:
Wow.
My initial reaction was even if he technically was in the wrong the police were wasting their time on this, but if he asked and they said no they should absolutely hammer that a-hole.
quannlace
‘Amusing,’ as in WTF?
piratedan
stole this from a friend of mine…
if only those FreedomWorks employees had been armed, maybe they would still be employed…..
Maude
@Napoleon:
Gregory was stupid enough to show it on national tv. He deserves whatever happens.
Supernumerary Charioteer
We keep predicting that the (unintentional, of course) results of conservative policies are going to turn us into a failed state, with roving gangs of criminally-funded thugs and ideologues appropriating other people’s resources through bribery, extortion, and outright theft. Thank God for Dick Armey showing us that our predictions are right.
jheartney
Aside from the lovely image of a wingnut lobbying headquarters on the edge of dissolving into a firefight, there’s the bit in the article about how Armey didn’t know what he was doing once he took over, and that their rich patron had to pay him a ransom to get him to go away.
These people really deserve each other. And what a wonder that their time in power a few years back ended as a trainwreck.
Ken
@Xenos: Yeah, and just when you think you’ve got the right response, you look at question 1(b): “Assume now the guard at the door, not recognizing the group and seeing that one was armed, opened fire killing all three. Discuss.”
AxelFoley
Please don’t shoot up the place
Cause I see some ladies tonight
That should be having my baby, baby
Ash Can
If that incident had resulted in a shootout at the FreedomWorks office, the nation would have been better off for it.
Peregrinus
@Hillary Rettig:
Didn’t the gentleman from Texas once say “I’m Dick Armey. And if there was a dick army, Barney Frank would want to join up.” – or am I making that up?
Villago Delenda Est
I might add that method is good for other Dicks, like Cheney.
Nethead Jay
Not sure I would call the gun-carrying part amusing. And I wonder how this incident was kept quiet until now. Would be nice to have police and prosecutors take an interest in this
Amir Khalid
@Napoleon:
That was my initial reaction too. But if he showed that magazine on TV after the police advised NBC against it, then I also have to agree that he and NBC deserve to suffer legal consequences.
Quicksand
Are people in this thread actually calling for Gregory to be prosecuted here?
Wow.
Paul in KY
@Hillary Rettig: ‘Dick Army’ would be a good name for a rave band (or maybe Industrial Metal).
Ash Can
@MattF: Wow. I had honestly assumed professionalism on NBC’s part and assumed they had cleared the stunt with the authorities first. That they sought that clearance, were turned down, and did it anyway is mind-boggling. Maybe they figured a sensational event involving them getting the book thrown at them, one of their stars thrown in jail etc. would make for good publicity.
KCinDC
Can someone explain why any of the ultrarich scum running our politics are going to continue giving money to FreedomWorks if it’s going to be used to continue to pay Dick Armey millions to do nothing?
arguingwithsignposts
@Tara the Antisocial Social Worker:
Stewart and Colbert are often on vacation when big events happen. One wonders if people time things so they don’t make the shows. Of course, the Onion never sleeps.
Peregrinus
@Quicksand:
Well, it’s a more complex question than that for me.
On the one hand, preferably, no, I wouldn’t want to see him prosecuted for the one damn time he chose to commit journalism. I’m also pretty heavy on that whole freedom of the press thing, and honestly, getting prosecuted for showing one damn high capacity magazine and questioning LaPierre shouldn’t be a crime.
On the other, they specifically asked their local law enforcement authority if they could do something, that authority said no, and they did it anyway. (From what I understand, what they violated isn’t a criminal law problem but something along the lines of a public health violation.) So I don’t know. I think the police will look into it, throw their hands up at the first sign of trouble from NBC, and leave the whole thing the blue hell alone.
Schlemizel
@Peregrinus:
I do know that the foul mouthed Dick used to ‘slip’ and call him ‘Barney Fag’. After repeatedly asking him to knock it off and getting ignored Rep Frank took to the House floor and went on record that should Armey ‘slip’ again Frank would read a list of every Republican representative he know to be gay.
The foul mouth Dick never made that little slip again
Paul in KY
@Ash Can: That’s the thing. Probably none of those weenies was armed & if the unknown-dude-with-gun had pulled it out, they all would have wet themselves or pulled a Costanza (running out while shoving little old ladies & kids to act as human shields).
They are wussies when it comes to actually cashing the check their mouths have wrote.
Paul in KY
@Villago Delenda Est: When we have the Revolution, I have just the position for you VDE!
Schlemizel
Aw crap! Please get me out of moderation! I mistakenly mentioned the F*G word while explaining how Congressman Frank dealt with the foul mouthed Dick
Paul in KY
@KCinDC: They have too much money. I think their taxes should go up.
GregB
@Peregrinus:
No, Armey called Congressman Frank Barney Fag in an interview.
Which prompted Barney Frank to say to the effect: My parents have been together for 60 years and no one ever called them ‘The Fags’.
mouse tolliver
It’s only a matter of time before they start employing management skills from the SPECTRE handbook — with exploding chairs and poisoned tipped switchblade shoes and whatnot.
Rosie Outlook
I wonder how amused the Village would have been if one of the people in the office had pulled a shotgun out of his drawer and blasted Armey and his goon into next week?
Oh, wait. Self-defense, unlike taxes, is not for the little people. Never mind.
jheartney
@KCinDC: All of wingnut welfare is pretty much of a grift. The reason they get traction is that there’s so much money spent that it has an effect despite the fact that much is wasted, as well as because the ruling class in DC is primed to be receptive to right wing arguments (they’re all rich, so they speak the same language already).
Amir Khalid
@Quicksand:
Not quite. NBC and Dick Gregory willfully disregarded police advice not to use the 30-round magazine as a prop. The violation is nothing much in itself; but it was poor judgement to disregard police advice, especially over something not strictly essential to the story at hand. NBC and Gregory deserve little sympathy if they get the book thrown at them.
Quicksand
@Peregrinus:
Yeah, I get it. I can’t really defend Gregory, exactly. It was a stupid and awkward stunt, totally unnecessary, albeit in service of trying to make a decent point.
And I’m having a hard time buying into the frame of “the DC police said this so it must be true and NBC is clearly in the wrong.” I expect better from the commentariat here.
It’s a stupid manufactured controversy over nothing.
Napoleon
@arguingwithsignposts:
Oh, I have a feeling that Larry Craig was doing his toe tapping routine during periods that they were not on vacation as well.
Peregrinus
@Quicksand:
Colonel Mustard dreamt it up because he’s too tired of trying to figure out how to legally transport a gun from RI, through MA, to NY. I am not making this up.
For me this is mostly just schadenfreude at Dancin’ Dave.
Quicksand
@Peregrinus:
QED
trollhattan
@arguingwithsignposts:
I’ll guess they were relieved to have not been on the week after Newtown. I do, however, expect them to give the NRA both barrels once they’re back. That should only take four or five whole episodes, each.
Amir Khalid
@Quicksand:
No, it’s not “nothing”. If it is indeed the law in Washington DC that you can’t possess a 30-round magazine, even to the extent of using it for a prop in a television interview, then it appears that NBC and Dick Gregory did indeed break the law. And if they sought police advice beforehand and were told not to do it, as is being reported, then they can’t claim ignorance.
As things stand, the cops have to investigate, then the DA’s office has to decide whether it’s worthwhile to prosecute. The DA might well decide not to bother; but if he decides otherwise, then NBC and Gregory have only themselves to blame.
trollhattan
@Paul in KY:
Double-bill with Pussy Riot. Vlad as guest drummer.
Peregrinus
@Amir Khalid:
Paging Dr. Freud!
(His name’s Dave, though “Dick Gregory” is probably a more accurate summation of the man.)
James E Powell
@Peregrinus:
I don’t know how community service works in DC, but if there is a way to get Gregory in an orange reflector vest picking up litter, I want it to happen.
Deborah Tinsley
@MattF:
Why didn’t Gregory just show a picture or a video of a high capacity clip in action.
JWL
Sobbed “at the news” of being fired. You sure about that?
Because had I been confronted by a armed gunsel who was working for a man who subsequently walked away with millions of dollars, I’m pretty sure I’d been sobbing out of fear for my life. I might well conclude that I’d been the victim of an assault, and suffered a heavy emotional trauma as a result. God knows if I’d ever be the same. I think I might already has spoken to a lawyer about wetting my beak.
Amir Khalid
@Peregrinus:
Oopsie.
jp7505a
@Nethead Jay: Nothing to see here.As long as Dancin Dave has a clip that couldn’t hurt anyone (unless used as a club to beat Wayne over the head with) the cops will ignore Armey and his gun that could have resulted in some real damage. Gotta keep the priorities straight
Amir Khalid
@Peregrinus:
Oopsie.
Amir Khalid
@Peregrinus:
Oopsie.
Amir Khalid
@Peregrinus:
Oopsie. Wasn’t there a comedian by the name Dick Gregory?
Amir Khalid
@Peregrinus:
Oopsie. Wasn’t there a comedian by the name Dick Gregory?
Bobby Thomson
@Peregrinus: Hush your mouth.
Amir Khalid
@Peregrinus:
Oopsie. Maybe I had him confused with someone else. Wasn’t there a comedian once named Dick Gregory?
Amir Khalid
And now it’s multiple-comment time for me. FYWP.
Mike E
Staff cried because they could just see The Invisible Hand on that holstered gun, amirite?
Southern Beale
And yet all they had to do was write Armey a check and he went away. Wish all of our gun-wielding nut jobs were that easy to deal with.
RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist
As an old and very disreputable friend used to say: “man, you couldn’t pay people to entertain you like that!”.
Keep it up, ‘wingers. America needs more laughs.
Villago Delenda Est
Yes, there is a comedian named Dick Gregory, but he is more than just a comedian, so very much more, and one of the good guys, unlike that other Gregory fellow, who has an irrevocable appointment with a tumbrel.
Peregrinus
@Amir Khalid:
There was! Check #66.
(God, I really hope this one only shows up once.)
Xenos
@Southern Beale: Actually, it looks like they did not write hime a check. They signed a settlement involving a promise to pay, in the future, 8 million dollars.
Given the gunplay involved and the outrageous sum demanded, does anyone here think duress might be a useful defense against the enforcement of that contract?
MikeJ
@JWL: Gunsel != gunman. Gunsel is roughly “faggot”.
RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist
@Xenos: “Don’t go away mad, Dick. Just go away!”
debbie
I smell a sequel to Breslin’s “The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight.”
Even better, over the weekend, I listened to a local nut job radio show host interview one of Breitbart’s coven, who said the word on the street is that Beck is out to get Fox, and he implied that Beck actually had the money to do so..
I see lots of fun times ahead.
Napoleon
@Deborah Tinsley:
Or maybe one that was intentionally modified to be non-functional (which as I type this if NBC’s legal dept was involved maybe that is what they did).
roc
When a reclusive millionaire fronts $8 million dollars to have an unruly former executive go away quietly, I think it’s past time to stop giving the “he-said/she-said” treatment to the “grass roots” nonsense.
Svensker
@Amir Khalid:
Let me get this straight. You can walk around town carrying a big-ass gun with a 30 round magazine and nobody can say boo to you. But if you show one on a “news” show that’s a problem? I don’t understand this. Help me out here.
ETA: Oh, OK, DC, Col. Mustard. Never mind.
Liberty60
Don’t care one way or another about the brandishing of a high capacity clip/magazine, but I wonder-
Did Gregory somehow think that rubbing shoulders with/ fellating the likes of Karl Rove and all the awful gray eminences he fluffs on a weekly basis would somehow purchase some goodwill, or save his ass from the Jacobins?
Let eveyone see this and take warning- these fanatics would bay for the head of anyone who insufficient fealty to the True Cause.
Trakker
I fail to see the humor in this. These are the people who are now running our country. They are destroying us and our wealth, they are out of control, and yet a considerable portion of our population embraces them because they fight to vanquish liberalism in America. We are becoming a clown state in the world. Only the continued value of the dollar saves us from being a nation of ridicule. I’m just so disgusted…
Seanly
How can I get in on grifting money from tired old conservative loons? These millionaires & billionaires seem to have money to burn. I don’t even need much. About $200k would set me up pretty good. Maybe I should form my own SuperPAC…
shortstop
I wish a front-pager would talk up this little gem. I’m putting it here instead of the open thread because I think Doug might be the likeliest taker.
From New York mag’s story on the NRO cruise:
Peregrinus
@shortstop:
Here you go.
Or do you mean that specific quote?
Ms. D. Ranged in AZ
@Tara the Antisocial Social Worker: Imagine a movie made about “Being Dick Armey” similar to the film “Being John Malkovich”….oh the satirical opportunities would abound in such a script.
shortstop
@Peregrinus: Ha! I missed it, what with all the holiday festivating I’ve been doing. So never mind, although those specific quotes are particularly mind-blowing.
General Stuck
Speaking of the Tea Party. They lost the election, but the bats are still busy in the wingnut belfrey,
So it’s the UN’s turn again for the boogyman, and a twist on the ACORN plot to steal elections via their agents of soshulism in local election boards.
But Yo, a single voice cries out from the fever swamp.
You invite Beetlejuice into your tent, it is gonna be showtime!
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Quicksand: Yeah, I’m thinking the same way you do. David Gregory uses a totally appropriate prop in the performance of actual journalism, and rather than cheering for Gregory for once doing his job, people are joining in the “Gregory did something illegal.” It should be legal for him to show an empty large capacity magazine/clip in this case. Hell, I think it helps a lot of people get an idea of what we’re talking about when we say 30 round magazine.
Amir Khalid
@shortstop:
Have you seen this thread?
Another Halocene Human
Has anybody seen this?
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/adopt-australias-gun-laws-which-have-eliminated-100-gun-massacres-adoption-1996-no-effect-hunting/f4ZlVwJd
I saw it in comments somewhere. Looks like the petition creator doesn’t know how to promote it.
Another Halocene Human
@Tara the Antisocial Social Worker: He could always go by “Rich”.
mdblanche
@arguingwithsignposts: I’ve noticed the same thing. When they prominently announced a week or two back that it was their last shows of the year, I started feeling nervous. I tried to tell myself I was just imagining things, but the next day when I check out the news I read that a madman had gunned down a class of kindergarteners. Now I don’t think Stewart and Colbert should ever be allowed to take time off ever again.
Ms. D. Ranged in AZ
@JWL:
If they have two brain cells left, they will group together and sue the ever lovin daylight out of both Armey and FreedomWorks–ah, the deep pockets of shallow men
Ms. D. Ranged in AZ
@Southern Beale:
Last time I checked that was extortion. But considering “those people”, might makes right so it’s a-okay.
JustAnotherBob
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
It isn’t. Awareness of that fact was high. Gregory is due a dope slap.
The prop department could have faked one up from some foam board in a half hour or less.
But the important stuff is how the Tea Party is showing its center. It’s not run by a bunch of white middle class people who don’t understand that Medicare is a government program.
It’s run by some ‘very rich’ who are scamming those middle class members in order to increase their vote count.
Time to start educating Tea Party ‘regulars’ about how the very rich are screwing them along with the rest of us.
Monkey Business
Dick Armey’s next venture will be recruiting conservative nerds to troll the online liberal blogosphere.
He’ll call it “Dick Armey’s Dick Army”.
Another Halocene Human
@Ms. D. Ranged in AZ: From your lips to Gaia’s ears. If anyone is likely to push a suit like this to the bitter end, it’s a wingnut. Nobody feels more persecuted than they.
I wonder if they, too, had a talk with Santa Millionaire and got paid up front to keep it in the family, though?
Maybe not enough because this news is leaking out?
Rasputin's Evil Twin
What I’m enjoying here is a “grassroots” organization has $8 million to throw at Arney to go away, and gets another $12 million just like that? “Grassroots”? Please…
Another Halocene Human
@Ms. D. Ranged in AZ: Extortion? Libertarianism freedum libel!
Roger Moore
@KCinDC:
Because only a small fraction of it will go to pay off Dick Armey; apparently his $8 million is spread over 20 years. That means most of it will go to spreading wingnut policies that favor the ultra-rich, which is exactly why the cash will keep flowing in.
Forum Transmitted Disease
As with every incident that involves swinging your dick in public, this was pretty unnecessary.
I might also add this is not how civilized people comport themselves, not especially in the 21st century.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Monkey Business:
I like “Dick Armey’s Army of Dicks,” myself.
Napoleon
@Roger Moore:
Seriously, that is his deal? So the people that fund that organization now only need to quit funding it, move across the street and open a new astroturf outfit and fund it instead.
Brilliant!
Matt
Would make for a great headline:
“Dick Armey takes over the Dick Army with an armed dick”
:)
JWL
@MikeJ: I stand corrected. The only time I can recall ever hearing the term was in the Maltese Falcon. Bogart used it to describe Sydney Greenstreet’s flunkie. It’ definitely the first time I ever used it, and I suppose the last.
Tokyokie
@JWL: I believe John Huston and Humphrey Bogart went with that term, figuring that most people would understand it the way you did (and me, too, for a long time), while being able to get away with its real meaning. And it wasn’t just any flunkie, it was the great Elisha Cook Jr.
Peregrinus
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Like I said upthread, I think he used “dick army” himself – and then proceeded to say that Barney Frank would want to join up if there were such a thing, because the only thing more reliable than irony is Dick Armey being an asshole.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Tokyokie:
Dashiell Hammet used the term to sneak past the censors where The Maltese Falcon was first serialized. He assumed (correctly) that they wouldn’t know the origins of the word and think it was gun-related. As far as I can tell, John Huston didn’t know the origins, either, so it crept past the Breen office.
Citizen_X
@JWL:
Perhaps they were crying, to the tune of “Stagger Lee,”
“Please, Dick Armey, please don’t take my life
I’ve got four hungry children, and a dear sweet loving wife
You’re a bad man,
You mean old Dick Armey.”
West of the Rockies (formerly Frank W.)
Wow, the wingnuts really do turn on each other pretty quickly. Big drama over at Breitbart’s blog (whatever it’s called) and this Dick Armey situation (not to mention his colleagues leaving Boehner hung out to dry). Well, I guess that when your world view is pretty much predicated on fear and anger, so it goes….
It's Not The Fall, It's The Landing
Any mention of Dick Armey ought to include a link to the Saturday Night Live bit in which the sketch’s version of Tweety Matthews referred to then-Congresscritter Armey as “Penis Navy,” “Wiener Air Force” and “Vagina Coast Guard.”
To which I only can add: Prick Marines.
This comment is going into moderation hell, isn’t it?
Older
If there isn’t a porn actor using the name “Dick Army”, there ought to be. Or “Prick Armey”.
JWL
@Citizen_X: Permit my attorney to rephrase: “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, my client was sobbing in fear of his life. Just look at what the monsters have done to him”!! [cue to me in the courtroom, curled up in a fetal position, sucking my thumb as a stream of urine trickles from my pants and across the tiled floor].
Oh, yeah. It would take at least a few million dollars for me to recover from that trauma, if I ever did.
J R in WV
@Maude:
Oh please – that would be like trying to convict someone of a crime for having a large empty knife sheath.
A magazine without bullets AND a gun is a totally meaningless piece of useless hardware.
Plus he was reporting on gun violence (via the First Amendment) in a city which has had its gun control laws declared unconstitutional under the 2nd amendment by the Supreme Court.
chuckieboy
New reality show,,, DICK ARMEY AND HIS ARMY OF DICKS
J R in WV
@Amir Khalid:
Dick Gregory actually went beyond humour to become a Civil Rights activist who was a leader in the battle for voting freedom for blacks in the south.
Long hunger strikes, among other things. Pretty famous in the day.
koolearl
@Paul in KY: @Paul in KY: There is a Brooklyn punk band named Dick Army. m.myspace.com/profile/profilehome.wap?bfd=offdeck&friendid=188970714&isredirected=true
Bubblegum Tate
@debbie:
I don’t think Jebus loves me enough for that to be true, but man, that’d be sweet.
redshirt
Make Love not Dick Armey.
Paul in KY
@trollhattan: Rock on!
Paul in KY
@koolearl: All my good ideas get taken! Thanks for the heads up.
glocksman
My understanding of DC law is that even if one has a carry permit for a gun, you still cannot have it loaded with a hi cap magazine.
I’d be very interested to know if Armey and his posse were using hi cap mags in their guns.
Fax Paladin
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): In the book it was quite clear that Wilmer and Joel Cairo were an item, for what that’s worth.