I hate to say it. I hope I don’t sound ridiculous … Sorry to Keke Palmer, whose previously pristine mind palace has now been sullied with the knowledge of who Dick Cheney is. Last week, a clip of the Hustlers star taking a lie-detector test and admitting she had “no idea†who the former vice-president was went viral. In the full video, posted by Vanity Fair, Palmer is asked if her character True Jackson, from Nickelodeon’s True Jackson, VP — a show about a 15-year-old who is made vice-president of a high-end fashion company — was a better vice-president than Cheney. Faced with a picture of Cheney on a plane, Palmer looked taken aback and said, “Who the hell is … ?â€
“I hate to say it. I hope I don’t sound ridiculous. I don’t know who this man is,†she confessed. “I mean, he could be walking down the street, and I wouldn’t know a thing.†Then, pushing the picture with the resigned, pitying energy of someone putting down a sick animal, she concluded: “Sorry to this man.†The clip instantly exploded into a meme, and “Sorry to this man†became a succinct, tidy way to dismiss someone.
And how beautiful for Palmer, that she could move through the world unburdened by the knowledge of the instrumental role Cheney played in leading the United States into the Iraq War, or that time he shot his friend in the face, or the 2018 film Vice. Alas, nothing pure can last, and after her video went viral, Palmer’s mom taught her the way of the world, and of former veeps.
“It was so crazy. My mom was like, ‘You didn’t know who Dick Cheney is?’†she said during a panel at the Brooklyn Expo Center, according to “Page Six.†“I said, ‘We don’t even talk about Dick Cheney!’ and then she tried to tell me what he was about, and I said, ‘I see why we don’t talk about him!’â€