I should be more careful when I complain about things like pulling teeth, putting teeth in laws, etc.

An important liberal blogger (I guess he's liberal) named Billmon likened Dick Cheney to the sadistic Nazi dentist played by Laurence Olivier in Marathon Man, and he supplied a gruesome picture showing the ghastly tortures beginning as the dentist starts to pry open poor Dustin Hoffman's jaws.

Opines Billmon,

Cheney's face has that same dull, soulless aura about it -- the "banality of evil" look. It's way too easy to imagine Dick leaning over Dustin Hoffman with that electric drill in his hand, patiently asking the same question over and over:

"Is it safe?"

Don't worry, I'm not going into that cavity again, a freshly cut nerve is infinitely more painful.

I don't feel very safe speculating about this, but I have some serious problems -- both with Billmon's opinions and with his picture, so I'm shooting my own copy all the way up to blog etherland.

Here's the problem: Billmon thinks the Nazi dentist looks just like Dick Cheney, but I'm more than a little concerned with who the patient looks like:

Who the hell is that, anyway?

Is it safe to hazard a guess? I'm almost sure I was reading something about dental work recently performed on one of the big bloggers, but my mind is starting to go, and even if he said something about dental issues, I can't remember whether he said anything about any connection between his dentist and the evil Halliburton company.

It unfair to speculate about the patient's identity here (and I hate to invade people's medical privacy), but if it's who I think it is, then I suspect Billmon might begin to see the dentist in at least a slightly more favorable light (regardless of whether he's Cheney or the Nazi).

UPDATE (08/01/05): Is it safe to send dentists to the front? Glenn Reynolds ponders putting teeth in civil defense. (Yes, as long as it's no drill.)