Q: “What do Dick Cheney and Lord Voldemort have in common?”
A: They  both tried to kill someone named Harry!

This joke was told to me by my cousin who (like me) is a big Harry Potter fan. She said she had heard it from a friend who’d read this joke online shortly after Cheney’s accidental shooting of his friend, prominent Austin, Tex. lawyer, Harry Whittington in 2006. The incident took place in a Texas ranch where he and Cheney were out in the woods hunting quail: according to testimony, Cheney saw a quail near Whittington and shot, hitting the lawyer in the face instead. Mr. Whittington survived with no great injury. What caused controversy and resulted in this joke however, is that many people did not believe Cheney’s story since the ex vice-president was a seasoned hunter. To add to the fire, a few weeks after begin shot in the face, Mr. Whittington apologized to Cheney for all the scrutiny and negative conjectures that the media was spreading about him. In return, Cheney accepted the apology, but never issued one back.

Lord Voldemort is the nemesis of Harry Potter in the eponymous novel. He tried to kill Harry multiple times due to a prophecy that foretold his demise at the hand of the boy. Voldemort is also known to be ruthless, conniving and deceitful, qualities that people also attributed to Cheney.