Kerry insults Cheney's Daughter

[cash78mere]

oh please. of course the cheney's are going to act "insulted". they are probably so thrilled that kerry used her as an example so they could make themselves out to be victims. that way they could tell they country what a horrible, uncaring person kerry is. whatever.

kerry's wife being rich was a big factor when he first became a candidate. people talked about her being rich and out of touch with americans from the beginning. you can't have it both ways. if republicans can bring up heinz-kerry, democrats can use mary cheney.

[Tom Earp]

Right or wrong, still a very low blow!

Polotics, whereby to spend a shit load of money to attain an elected position is getting unrestrained.

Power is becoming Rich and Powerful just as any other demogogery has become.

I love, "I Approve of this Ad", knee jerk for some of the crap but still sling the shit at opponents with unshamed values. Jerk is right.

These are "Battle Ground States" for targeting on. Hell, Sounds like Iraq!

I want to be a Dictator and be a good one. Better than what the hell we are getting now.

Know any poor Candidates where you are voting?

[PhiPsiRuss]

Originally posted by cash78mere
if republicans can bring up heinz-kerry, democrats can use mary cheney.

Two wrongs don't make a right. Period.

There is absolutely no legitimate rationale to drag a private person into presidential politics without that person's consent.

You must be a Kerry supporter, because the only people who will think that what he did was not morally repugnant, are Kerry supporters.

I have probably made it clear I am a liberal (and proud of it!) To bring out the fact that Cheney's daughter is a lesbian is stating fact. It's not like we all didn't know she was a lesbian. If Bush pointed it out, I sincerely don't think it would be made a big deal since this country, in general, is a pretty conservative nation.

I am sure all political figures' children expect to be put in the spotlight at some point in their lives. Their lives, personalities, careers, schools, etc. will be scrutinized. Theirs won't be as scrutinized as much as their parents' lives but it will happen. Like the old saying goes, "Such is Life."

[hoosier]

Originally posted by James
I didn't see the insult. It isn't like he outed her on National TV. . . .

Where was the cruelty?

If Bush or Cheney mentioned Wade Edwards (the son who died in auto accident) to build support for a highway safety funding law, the media wing of the Democrat party would be having a heart attack of criticism.

In contrast, anything Kedwards say is OK, or "fair game".

[Rudey]

Originally posted by Phasad1913
Ok, I forgot you know Kerry personally and know what his intention was

Oh snap, you know the Kerry-meister?

-Rudey

[Rudey]

Again, it was Kerry and not all Democrats.

Again, it is up to the person feeling insulted to say they are insulted.

Again, Kerry drew in the Cheney's personal family into the issue.

Again, Edwards' wife further pulled them in and insulted them by making remarks about their relationship with their daughter.

-Rudey

[Peaches-n-Cream]

Rudey, I agree with everything that you listed especially with the third and fourth points.

Did you watch the McLaughlin Group this morning? They had a pretty interesting discussion about this.

[Rudey]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/18/op...?oref=login&hp


The New York Times

The Lowest Blow
By WILLIAM SAFIRE

Published: October 18, 2004


Washington — The memoir about the Kerry-Edwards campaign that will be the best seller will reveal the debate rehearsal aimed at focusing national attention on the fact that Vice President Cheney has a daughter who is a lesbian.

That this twice-delivered low blow was deliberate is indisputable. The first shot was taken by John Edwards, seizing a moderator's opening to smarmily compliment the Cheneys for loving their openly gay daughter, Mary. The vice president thanked him and yielded the remaining 80 seconds of his time; obviously it was not a diversion he was willing to prolong.

Until that moment, only political junkies knew that a member of the Cheney family serving on the campaign staff was homosexual. The vice president, to show it was no secret or anything his family was ashamed of, had referred to it briefly twice this year, but the press - respecting family privacy - had properly not made it a big deal. The percentage of voters aware of Mary Cheney's sexual orientation was tiny.

But an opening seized upon by Edwards in the vice-presidential debate raised that percentage. Because Cheney refused to react and the media did not see the spotlight on lesbianism as part of a political plan, the opening shot worked.

Emboldened, members of Kerry's debate preparation team made Mary Cheney's private life the centerpiece of their answer to the question, especially worrisome to them, about same-sex marriage. Kerry was prepped to insert her sexuality into his rehearsed answer: "If you were to talk to Dick Cheney's daughter, who is a lesbian. ..."

But in this second time around, the gratuitous insertion of Cheney's daughter into an answer slipping around a hot-button social issue revealed that it was part of a deliberate Kerry campaign strategy.

One purpose was to drive a wedge between the Republican running mates. President Bush supports a constitutional amendment limiting marriage to a union of a man and a woman; Cheney has long been on record favoring state option, but always adds that the president sets administration policy. That rare divergence of views is hardly embarrassing.

The sleazier purpose of the Kerry-Edwards spotlight on Mary Cheney is to confuse and dismay Bush supporters who believe that same-sex marriage is wrong, to suggest that Bush is as "soft on same-sex" as Kerry is, and thereby to reduce a Bush core constituency's eagerness to go to the polls.

The pro-Kerry columnist Margaret Carlson put her finger on it, finding that Kerry and Edwards "realize that discussing Mary Cheney is a no-lose proposition: It highlights the hypocrisy of the Bush-Cheney position to Democrats while simultaneously alerting evangelicals to the fact that the Cheneys have an actual gay person in their household whom they apparently aren't trying to convert or cure." (Italics mine.)

After the outspoken Lynne Cheney blasted this unsought intrusion of her daughter's private life as "a cheap and tawdry trick," the Kerry campaign hustled forward John Edwards's wife to charge that such motherly outrage "indicates a certain degree of shame with respect to her daughter's sexual preferences."

Worse than insensitive, that shot was off message, peeling the veneer off the Kerry-Edwards justification for making Mary famous: their oleaginous claim that, gee, they were only complimenting Dick Cheney for his fatherly tolerance. The crusher to that pretense came when the Kerry campaign manager, Mary Beth Cahill, coolly announced that the Cheney daughter was "fair game."

Apparently the American public thinks otherwise about the campaigning children of candidates. When polls showed two-to-one disapproval of the calculated Kerry-Edwards abuse of the young woman's privacy, the Democratic strategists who concocted this base-suppressing dirty trick orchestrated a defense that it was Dick Cheney who "outed" his daughter months ago. They are advising Kerry that he would look weak or, worse, slyly manipulative were he to apologize for tagging the Cheneys with the word "lesbian" before 50 million viewers.

Kerry will, I hope, assert his essential decency by apologizing with sincerity. Other Republicans hope he will let his self-inflicted wound fester. They have in mind a TV spot using an old film clip of a Boston lawyer named Welch at a Congressional hearing, saying "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"

[sugar and spice]

You can say that "the Cheneys have a right to feel insulted if they want to -- you can't decide whether or not other people have a right to be insulted by something," but that's ridiculous. If I chose to, I could be insulted if Kath told me that my hair is brown because I'd rather have blonde, but that doesn't mean that I'm being reasonable.

I'm sure yall saw this coming, but I don't think the Cheneys have any reason to feel insulted -- and in reality, I'm not sure that they actually are. I'm pretty sure that they're playing the "insulted" card to make undecided voters think that Kerry is a terrible person. And that's well within their right. It's just that I'm not sure where the insult comes into play. Kerry said that Cheney's daughter is a lesbian, which she is. It's a fact that is only distasteful to some members of society -- and the only reason that somebody should be "insulted" by it is if they choose to see it as distasteful . . . which the Cheneys theoretically don't, as they claim to accept their daughter as is, right? In that case, where's the insult?

I think it was risky for Kerry to mention the Cheneys' daughter in the debate. Personally, I thought it was brilliant. It put Bush off-guard and certainly made him reword his answers in a different way, knowing that he could not go on speaking in such an openly negative way about homosexuality when the viewers were going to connect his statements about homosexuals with Mary Cheney. (I also think that Bush's statements on the homosexual marriage issue were much more insulting than Kerry's, but considering I'm a bleeding heart liberal, I would, wouldn't I? ) Politically, I think Kerry did put off some voters by bringing her up -- he probably also reeled in some others.

[GeekyPenguin]

Originally posted by sugar and spice
You can say that "the Cheneys have a right to feel insulted if they want to -- you can't decide whether or not other people have a right to be insulted by something," but that's ridiculous. If I chose to, I could be insulted if Kath told me that my hair is brown because I'd rather have blonde, but that doesn't mean that I'm being reasonable.

I'm sure yall saw this coming, but I don't think the Cheneys have any reason to feel insulted -- and in reality, I'm not sure that they actually are. I'm pretty sure that they're playing the "insulted" card to make undecided voters think that Kerry is a terrible person. And that's well within their right. It's just that I'm not sure where the insult comes into play. Kerry said that Cheney's daughter is a lesbian, which she is. It's a fact that is only distasteful to some members of society -- and the only reason that somebody should be "insulted" by it is if they choose to see it as distasteful . . . which the Cheneys theoretically don't, as they claim to accept their daughter as is, right? In that case, where's the insult?

I think it was risky for Kerry to mention the Cheneys' daughter in the debate. Personally, I thought it was brilliant. It put Bush off-guard and certainly made him reword his answers in a different way, knowing that he could not go on speaking in such an openly negative way about homosexuality when the viewers were going to connect his statements about homosexuals with Mary Cheney. (I also think that Bush's statements on the homosexual marriage issue were much more insulting than Kerry's, but considering I'm a bleeding heart liberal, I would, wouldn't I? ) Politically, I think Kerry did put off some voters by bringing her up -- he probably also reeled in some others.

Yep. I thought it was great. Bush likes to talk about homosexuality like it's some weird disease (which I'm well aware he thinks it is) and Kerry bringing up Mary Cheney humanized it.

[KSig RC]

Originally posted by GeekyPenguin
Yep. I thought it was great. Bush likes to talk about homosexuality like it's some weird disease (which I'm well aware he thinks it is) and Kerry bringing up Mary Cheney humanized it.

Humanized it? Humanized it, I'm sure, by having a lackey insinuate that the Cheneys are ashamed? Humanized it by bringing her name up, instead of one of the dozens of openly gay celebrities who campaign for Kerry every day? Humanized it by marking a fucking unknown campaign staffer as "fair game" when he knows full well this has little to NO impact on policy or platforming? The "humanizing" angle is so weak, you may as well drop it now - you don't 'humanize' something by applying it to someone no one even knows or has heard of to this point. It's nonsense.

Look, regardless of what side of the aisle you're on, this was a low blow, and even if you think Cheney is playing the 'outrage card' for political benefit, why on earth would this be wrong, but jamming someone's sexual preference into a minute crack in a debate is completely allowed? They're both douchebag maneuvers.

It is, quite simply, in poor taste - why should it even be relevant? You can assail Bush's stance on homosexuality all you want, but this is a dozen steps removed from that argument, and is probably nearly as bad. Is it 'off-limits'? Obviously not. Is it a dickhead move? Obviously, unilaterally, without a doubt. This epitomizes cheesy politics.

[IowaStatePhiPsi]

I wonder why nobody has noticed Alan Keyes's lesbian daughter... just another example of a staunch conservative that can't deal with sexual minorities that has to deal with the issue right in his own family.

(What did Keyes call Mary Cheney at the Republican Convention? a "selfish hedonist"? And Dick and Lynne were silent about that comment... but say something nice and "Oh Gnos!!111!!1one!! You're invading our family's privacy!!!11one!!1")

[James]

Lipstick Lesbians are cool

[Rudey]

Originally posted by IowaStatePhiPsi
I wonder why nobody has noticed Alan Keyes's lesbian daughter... just another example of a staunch conservative that can't deal with sexual minorities that has to deal with the issue right in his own family.

(What did Keyes call Mary Cheney at the Republican Convention? a "selfish hedonist"? And Dick and Lynne were silent about that comment... but say something nice and "Oh Gnos!!111!!1one!! You're invading our family's privacy!!!11one!!1")

Again, Keyes has nothing to do with this. Can you stay on topic or do you have a disorder?

Again, Keyes was strongly looked down on by Republicans in the media and in Illinois.

Stop making things up.

-Rudey