About Bill and Wayne
(Reprinted from the Cedar Rapids [Iowa] Gazette - 1/2/2008)
A Shared 'Vice'
by Merle Stickney
It's their boyish enthusiasm that engages you first. Despite being nearly into middle age, they have a youthful zeal that's infectious--no matter how oddly directed it turns out to be. 
Keltner and Schellaberger are self-proclaimed "Vice Presidential groupies"—hardcore wonks, VP obsessives, Veep "foamers" (an apparent reference to train aficionados whose hypnotic passion often makes them appear, slack- jawed, to be "foaming" at the mouth).
The story of their friendship is just as unlikely and serendipitous as the path that brings them through Iowa this year. "We circled one another for years", says Keltner, a self-described "sometime entrepreneur" and temporary office worker from Vancouver, Washington, "in VP chatrooms, on eBay competing for Vice Presidential memorabilia, at Veep funerals and other Veep events--we were even at the Agnrew inaugural, though we didn't know each other yet!" They met finally at Spiro Agnew's gravesite, each leaving a bouquet of Black-Eyed Susans at the tombstone of Maryland's favorite Greek-American son and the unlikeliest "Veep" of them all.
Friday,
October 30, 2009
Today in VeepsBlog!
"Let's Get Ready To Grummm-ble!"
I didn’t imagine it possible, but I think he was considerably more statesmanlike when he was telling Senator Leahy to go fuck himself.
For a man who spent the previous eight years lurking in the shadows, the former Vice President has spent the last nine-plus months desperate for attention. He could have had all his current face-time and more when he was running the country in absentia. Now he's treating the bully pulpit like a train that he forgot to catch.
There may be something greater at work here, though.
It would be ungentlemanly to speculate on the former Vice President’s mortality, but I think it’s a safe assumption that when that much-depleted heart finally does approach its living end--when the Heritage Foundation will prepare to store it in a jar, with his brain, until medical science discovers how to reanimate them--Mr. Cheney has no intention of going gently into that goodnight.
Maturity's apex should be a happy time. If you're fortunate, you've successfully navigated the stormy seas of life and now get to watch the sunset in still waters--proud of your accomplishments, surrounded by people who love you, whom you've maybe borne and nurtured into warm, decent human beings who work every day to make the world a better place, and credit your tutelage and example.
On sale everywhere! 
"Veeps: Profiles in Insignificance"
by Bill Kelter & Wayne Shellabarger
"I never found anything funny about our Vice Presidents, until I read Veeps, a welcome, often hilarious respite from the tedium of national politics."
--Howard Zinn, historian and author of A People's History Of The United States
DICK CHENEY TERROR ALERT LEVEL
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Veep of the Week
John Nance Garner
Democrat
Texas
With Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
1933-1941
The Vice Presidency has spelled the dismal and often undignified end to a not-insignificant number of political careers. Many of those careers, though, have belonged to middling gray suits and men of uninspiring character who, had they lived today, would probably have gone to their twilight years on a quietly desperate path paved with middling corporate board appointments and an occasional mention in their hometown paper when they showed up to present a tiara to the 4th of July Princess or cut the opening ribbon at the Nalley’s plant. Faced with that definition of mediocrity, joining a winning Presidential ticket was a no-lose proposition and practically a dream come true.
Copyright © 2009 - Bill Kelter & Wayne Shellabarger - All Rights Reserved
