I believe that Kerry got an annulment from the Catholic Church.

I wonder what he said about why his first marriage was not "until death", as he originally promised.

The same reason that tons of other people don't stay married until death, I presume. The point isn't Kerry's divorce - indeed, he seems to have found happiness, and good for him.

The point is that divorce IS painful to children generally, and that this is a legitimate policy issue... but that specifically drawing Kerry's children by name into that public issue, in order to make that point, would be beyond the pale. Just as bringing in Ms. Cheney (repeatedly) was.

Joe,

You can bold, underline and italicize "repeatedly". That was what removed all doubt ensuring a backfire.

The Mary Cheney complaints are ridiculous. Her own father talks about having a gay daughter; she's out as a Republican gay activist, and has been for years; and she travels on the campaign plane with her partner. She's no more private about homosexuality than Andrew Sullivan. I don't hold with outing private persons, even Maya Keyes I guess (although the Schadenfreude was incredible), but that isn't an issue here.

I'm not sure what Kerry hopes to gain, and I find the topic rather boring. But at least in theory, I suppose

1. Kerry hopes that undecided voters who are less sympathetic than he on homosexual rights will vote for him when they see that such tragedies befall even the best of families. </sarcasm>

2. Kerry hopes to demoralize those Bush supporters who are anti-gay bigots, implying that Bush doesn't hate homosexuals as much as they do, and might even be faking it. (There really are such people: the Texas Republican Party has been wailing over the legalization of "sodomy".) Driving down the other side's base's enthusiasm is a big part of recent presidential campaigns.

Either of these, or other purposes I haven't thought of, seem to me like totally legitimate campaigning.

It's also delicious to see you guys whinging about allegedly unfair campaigning. For a change.

Problem is not about gay/lesbian. Problem is integrity, which Kerry is lacking. You do not attack your opponent's children. It's tacky. As a parent, I did not like Kerry but now extended the same distaste for Edward and his wife. I may disagree with what the parents do but I will not attack the child.

I guess there is a reason why Kerry's mom has to tell him about integrity 3 times. This certainly proves it.

Saying that an open lesbian is a lesbian is not an "attack", and the fact you think it is says much more about you than about John Kerry. Would it be an attack to say she was a blonde? A woman??

But Kerry didn't comment about the color of her hair. What does this say about him?

Andrew Lazarus: "seem to me like totally legitimate campaigning."

Yeah, he should just pour it on and put himself out of his misery.

People winced when Edwards popped off about Mary Cheney in the Veep debate. At best, he looked like somebody who's just oblivious to good taste. But it was just one small thing out of an entire debate, which was easy to overlook.

Then Kerry did it again (taking care to deploy the word LESBIAN). Now it looked like a strategy, and a nasty strategy at that.

I might add that Kerry's defenders have not been helping him out a bit on this; they've been digging his grave deeper. Mary Beth Cahill stupidly said that Mary Cheney was "fair game", and everybody is echoing her.

They're also pointing out that Mary Cheney is working for her father's campaign (Fair game! Fair game!) - and when people hear that, it confirms what they suspected all along: That Kerry and Edwards were sneaking in a vile insinuation aimed at pandering to some very low sentiment.

I'm with A.J. on this. I suppose Joe's annoyance is justified if it's in the context of a national election being so close that something this ephemeral could tip it. However, to talk about Mary Cheney's status, and something as traumatic to a family as divorce, in the same sentence -- it does suggest that her sexual orientation is a similar family trauma.

As for the "nice Mary Cheney story" in the Powerline blog, Powerline has this quote, "Nothing there about strong families 'dealing with the issue.' Rather, an invocation of Mary Cheney in support of the mantra that sexual orientation is pre-ordained."

Which raises a very old and very insulting debate over is it a choice? If it is a choice, goes the other mantra, they can changed -- or more to the point, they can be changed. This provides a lucrative practice for certain doctors and "ex-gay" ministries.

If sexual orientation is not a choice, goes the other mantra, the poor souls can't help themselves. That's the whiff I got off Kerry's answer.

The debate context was a direct question from Bob Schiefer, "Do you believe homosexuality is a choice?" I remember my first reaction being, what's this doing in a policy debate? The President's response was a decent enough point on equality, before veering off-subject onto marriage. If he actually frames this issue in context of "equal protection under the law" -- as enunciated in the Constitution -- then we've got a decent policy debate.

Columnist Dan Savage mentioned this in a July 1998 column in context of "ex-gay" ministries and it's on point again here: "These [recent ‘ex-gay’] ads are political attacks. If queers don’t want to be discriminated against, the ads implicitly argue, we should accept Jesus Christ as our personal savior and — poof! — become heterosexuals. Since we can change, they argue, we have no right to demand our rights; or more ominously, we have no right to exist. ... Or to personalize this: Even if it were possible for me to change my sexual orientation, what if I don’t wanna change?"

If you want to get mad at someone, how about Bob Schiefer?

Radical homosexual-agenda leaders have declared me Public Enemy #1 and are spending over a million dollars on vicious, false TV ads to defeat me.
 
I need your help.
 
You may know that I have been the U.S. House leader to protect traditional marriage from the radical agenda of the homosexual lobby by sponsoring the Marriage Protection Amendment.
 
[snip]
 
Leaders of the homosexual lobby know if they can take me out, no one will stand against them in the future.

AJL,

I don't know what tactical thinking underlies the decision for Kerry/Edwards keep bringing up up Mary Cheney, but I don't care. Whatever it is, it's weird and squirm-inducing to see someone else's child brought up for any political purpose (your own children are bad enough, but someone else's?).

Edwards had a son killed in a car accident. One of the conservative objections to increasing CAFE fuel-economy standards is that they will force cars to be lighter and therefore less safe in an accident. Should Bush or Cheney say something like, "I'm sure if Senator Edwards' dead son were here, he'd say he wanted larger, safer cars"? Christ, even I would vote for Kerry if either one of them came out with that.

Really, just leave the kids alone.

Spare me the fake outrage over this.

It is George W. Bush, not John Kerry, who supports this:

"Neither this Constitution or the constitution of any state, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups."

All else is theater.

Andrew, rent a clue: it's like the Freepers who were commenting on Chelsea Clinton's relative attractiveness. It's lame at best to make politician's kids an issue (unless they do it themselves - had Cheney waved the rainbow flag about his daughter, things would be different).

A.L.

I fully expect CBS to run F911 the night before the election, as a straight news item in reaction to Sinclair.

I hope Kerry keeps discussing it and Mrs. Edwards keeps offering her 2 cents as well. This is a sure vote getter for KE. If nothing happens this weekend, it may still be in the news Monday! Could lead to a Democrat landslide.

AJL,

Really, I'm not seeing how the campaign brochure you quoted is the product of a "nut." There is a "homosexual lobby," some elements of which may fairly be called "radical," and they certainly do have an "agenda" which includes defeat of the FMA.

I've seen far more overheated rhetoric used to denounce both the NRA and Sarah Brady. I'm not a fan of it, but surely you could find a better example.

Actually, I think the issue is faux outrage directed by the GOP to crowd out the video of Bush saying he isn't concerned about Bin Laden. (There's been some dead-on analysis that the full quote shows a discount of non-state terrorism relative to rogue state threats.) I don't see what's the big deal of mentioning that Mary Cheney, lesbian, is a lesbian. Now, I don't think it was necessary or useful and it's becoming obvious it wasn't a good political tactic, but it isn't a "vile insinuation".

The FMA, on the other hand, is vile. In all likelihood, it would actually take away domestic partnership rights same-sex couples already enjoy in states that saw fit to grant them by legislation or (in the case of state employees, for example) by executive action. A lot of this hoo-hah is to obscure the fact that the GOP base includes bigots.

Andrew, it has nothing to do with Mary Cheney or her private life. It has to do with attacking someone through their child. Every parent, especially mothers, reacts to that, regardles of their politics.

Google News has it as the number 2 story now, with 679 stories total. Keep it up there, it'll be the number one topic on the Sunday morning shows.

Sigh...

I suppose it's probably hijacking the thread to point out that the Dem's base is just as packed with bigots, just on different issues. As I have become fond of saying: you can have sex with whatever you want and that's a "lifestyle choice," but kill your own meat and you're an unforgivable pervert, unfit to mix with decent society.

Ahh yes, the loving parents Dick and Lynne Cheney, who couldn't be bothered to defend Mary when she was called a "selfish hedonist" by Alan Keyes, but are outraged when Kerry mentions her, in a decent, non-negative light, during the debate. Yeah I get the impression they care a lot...not. I guess it's ok when a republican gay bashes a fellow republican's daughter, but for a Democrat to mention that a republican has an already out and proud gay daughter is strictly off limits. If you want to talk about a lack of class on this subject, look within the republican party, because there is no class to be found. They won't even support civil unions for christ's sake.

When will the republican party return to normal? Can anyone give me a timeline for this? please...

With friends like Lazarus, Kerry needs no enemies! What lame reasoning. If I were voting for Bush, I would hope that Lazarus-like advisers pushed Kerry into continuing this line of personal attacks. But I'm not, so I won't.

Joe, as long as this thread is about the "classless and the clueless," how about this cluelessness elsewhere in the debate?

BOB SCHIEFFER: ... Suddenly we find ourselves with a severe shortage of flu vaccine. How did that happen?

BUSH: Bob, we relied upon a company out of England to provide about half of the flu vaccines for the United States citizen, and it turned out that the vaccine they were producing was contaminated. And so we took the right action and didn't allow contaminated medicine into our country. [snip]

In point of fact, the contaminated vaccine was from a UK plant belonging to the Chiron Corp. headquartered in Emeryville, California. The agency that detected the contamination was British.

The President went on to urge healthy people not to get a shot and brought up the litigation talking point yet again.

The followup question that the clueless Mr. Schaefer should have asked was,

"Given, Mr. President and Sen. Kerry, that the vaccine problem was that of a US firm, and if, God forbid, this winter's flu epidemic is as devastating as the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic, or if we suffer a terrorist biological attack as the government anticipated in the Dark Winter exercise, what active steps will your Administration take, other than urging people to avoid vaccination?

"And, Mr. President, since you mention litigation in this context: if this contaminated vaccine HAD gone out, and HAD injured ordinary Americans, how would they have had redress under your proposed tort reforms?"

Worth asking in a domestic policy debate. Much more than the Cheney family, I would think.

OK, Rob, you got me there. Really. (Although I eat meat, it's killed by others. I have eaten fish caught in front of me. Good too.) Let's say, the Democrats hoped it would be good politics to call out the Republcan bigots. And Bill is quite right: where were the Cheneys when Alan Keyes described gays, and quite speciifically Mary Cheney, as "selfish hedonists"? [Why Keyes would say that about his own daughter (even if, as I very much doubt, it were true in her individual case) instead of remain silent on the subject, I leave to psychiatry to explain.]

There is no private life issue here, unless you think talking about Andrew Sullivan as a gay activist is also exposing his private life.

And I'd like to hear the Bush Administration explain whether Mary Cheney's wedding band should be made illegal, or simply permanently irrelevant by Constitutional Amendment. Insinuating that the Cheneys are bad parents because one of their children turned out gay, that's an attack, and it's vile. Asking how the parents' policies impact their own children is not, and you might look back on the isolationists' attacks on FDR and whether he would send his children to war (before Pearl), which I think was legitimate politics arising from a mistaken viewpoint.

Bob,

You're misreading me. Based on my personal interactions with gay people and listening to their stories, I believe that in the vast majority of cases, their gay identity is something that just IS, rather than something "chosen" in any conventional sense of the term. It's who they are. So let's take that off the table.

I still say that using someone's kid to make this point is as every bit low as Rob Lyman's example. Once you say the issue is all that matters and you can use other people's kids to score political points, you're in a serious moral swamp. Indeed, using the death of Edwards' son in a car accident would be MORE defensible under praktike's formulation, because the stakes of the underlying issue are life and death. But I wouldn't go there, and no decent person I know would go there, and there's a reason for that not dreamed of in praktike's philosophy. Think about that one for a bit, and see if that's a philosophy you really want to keep.

My take is dead-simple: Leave other peoples' kids alone, unless they themselves choose to step into the spotlight and make their identity or experiences an issue. That strikes me as just basic decency, and violations from any quarter should be punished by the electorate.

I guess the people who didn't have any problems with Kerry's mention of Cheney's daughter don't have any problems when supposedly Bush supporters brought up McCain's black daughter in the South Carolina primary either.

Ur... do you mean Strom Thurman's daughter?

My take is dead-simple: Leave other peoples' kids alone, unless they themselves choose to step into the spotlight and make their identity or experiences an issue. That strikes me as just basic decency, and violations from any quarter should be punished by the electorate.

Well, Mary Cheney did, in fact, do gay outreach for Coors. So she passes your test, I would think.

Cheney didn't get mad at Alan Keyes - he got even.

Alan Keyes has paid dearly for his remaks by being marginalized in the party, and the fact that he's running as a sacrificial lamb candidate against Obama right now is not a badge of regard (the totals will be embarassing, and the party knew it, though they apparently knew that Keyes would see it differently and take the bait.)

Hunh, Joe? Keyes isn't so utterly deluded to think he could move to Illinois (recently a solid Dem state) and beat Obama. He's a selfish hedonist who wanted a larger platform, at least temporarily, from which to run of at the mouth. He wanted an audience. And he got it.

Do you think the GOP really wants to fall even further behind in the Illinois State Legislature as the Dems tie Keyes to all their marginal candidates? Me neither.

Andrew Lazarus: "it isn't a "vile insinuation".

Not only does it look like a vile insinuation, but it's an insinuation that is not only aimed at gay-unfriendly people (including many Southern Baptists on whom Kerry is relying).

It's also aimed at that portion of the Democratic base who hate conservative and/or Republican gays with a raging passion, and who take an unseemly amount of delight in obsessing on the issue. Nothing excites them more than a good outing, and they love to trumpet the alleged "hypocrisy" of people who are both conservative and gay. They can go on for hours about it. Instant Dean scream!

Bob, the cluelessness in this post must be related to classlessness, so the flu vaccine thing doesn't fit the post. But it would have been a good question. The simple answer to the tort part would be that people could still sue, but some of the abusive practices around class action lawsuits and features like unlimited punitive damages wouldn't be present. Etc., as per their proposed tot reforms. (Up here, we have a version of the "English Rule" whereby loser pays, so we don't have the same issues with silly lawsuits that the Excited States of America faces.)

I'd then add one to Sen. Kerry about FDA approval red tape, and what has he done about it in the Senate, and the effect of current tort laws on the willingness of companies to offer vaccines in the USA. Just to be fair and all - this is a situation that both parties have played a role in screwing up.

Having said that, priority #1 is getting it unscrewed up, pronto, for precisely the reasons you mention.

Repeat after me Glen.

There is no outing here.

Mary Cheney is a Republican gay activist. She has been out for many years. Her father mentions he has a gay daughter. No one has been outed.

Personally, I see absolutely nothing wrong with being conservative and gay. Now, gay and trying to impose legal restrictions on gays, that is a little strange. Gay and working for a party whose Texas state affiliate demands the recriminalization of all homosexual and many heterosexual bedroom activities, that's strange, yeah. It will be a great day if-and-when the social-libertarian conservatives, with whom I have some beliefs in common (say, on budgets) take control of the GOP from the social-intrusive conservatives, with whom I have nothing in common.

You still have not explained where is an insinuation—look up the word, it refers to something that isn't stated overtly, and you haven't specified what's vile. AFAICT, your problem is that a lot of Bush-sympathetic voters believe that Cheney's daughter is vile. Well, that's their problem (don't you think Mary Cheney would agree?), and the GOP campaign's reliance on bigots' votes is also their problem.

Praktike,

You really aren't getting this, are you? I'm surprised by that.

Being a commercial rep. for Coors does not make one a political target, nor one's family. Otherwise, surely the fact that there's a public accident report re: Edwards' dead son qualifies too.

There are reasons one doesn't do this sort of thing. Reasons well understoood by the undecided voter panel the NYT reported on in the "Kerry will pay" link.

Ms. Cheney has not voluntarily stepped into the political limelight on this issue. Until she does, she should not be used to score cheap political points. Nor was it necessary in any way to do so in order to make this point - and the repeated use is especially slimy.

While I generally agree with this viewpoint, the move by Sinclair Broadcasting is the same b.s. the LA Times tried to pull on Arnold. Legit issue, fine if they had run Stolen Honor 2 weeks ago rather than at the last minute. Now: no class. Claiming that you're following in the footsteps of CBS and ABC is no excuse.

If we play fair and they do not, we will be right. Dead right.

"Thanks" to Joe. That bq thing works. Cool. And you are right, "no decent person would go there".

And thanks to Bob Harmon for the chuckle. "1918 Spanish Flu epedemic"? What about The Black Plague? Egad! We're all gonna die.

Joe, Your thread does seek to address classlessness being cluelessness, although mentioning both (not to mention "and/or" in the title) suggests the two can mingle but still represent separate phenomena.

This was one serious gaffe that jumped out at me from that debate and is worth mentioning in some context.

The shrill tone of the Mary Cheney discussion suggests classlessness in the sense that, by changing the subject, we don't talk about real issues. The loss of half this country's flu vaccine supply is a serious gaffe. So, Joe, is the suggestion, raised in the second debate, that drugs sold in Canada are somehow a public health threat to the elder Americans who cross the border to buy them.

(Drugs, might I add, manufactured by US companies and quite often exported to Canada for sale there at lower prices than in the US).

How's this for classless cluelessness, Joe?

"HORSTMAN: Mr. President, why did you block the reimportation of safer and inexpensive drugs from Canada which would have cut 40 to 60 percent off of the cost?

BUSH: I haven't yet. Just want to make sure they're safe. When a drug comes in from Canada, I want to make sure it cures you and doesn't kill you. ... And what my worry is is that, you know, it looks like it's from Canada, and it might be from a third world. "

Classless and/or clueless enough?

BTW, the medical malpractice standard in torts law is simply stated as, duty to exercise that level of care, skill and ability ordinarily possessed by other professionals in good standing in the relevant community.
Also: duty to obtain fully informed consent from a patient before engaging in a medical procedure.

Not an easy standard. But if this is what pundits or politicians mean to get rid of, when they talk "tort reform," then that, too, is clueless and classless. And Kerry failed to speak up when his running mate's record in medical tort cases came under attack. He should have.

Being a commercial rep. for Coors does not make one a political target, nor one's family.

There's a revealing word: "target."

Why is Mary Cheney considered a "target" here?

Your sense of morality here is, frankly, bizarre.

Bush answers Schieffer's question by declaring that he wants to permanently take away Mary Cheney's right to marry another woman or even receive the legal incidents of marriage, and you're upset about John Kerry's remark in support of her?

Up is down.

Andrew Lazarus: "Repeat after me Glen. There is no outing here."

Come off it. You're being deliberately obtuse. I said they love a good outing, but they also love to attack openly gay conservatives - which is the case here.

Repeat after me: "I know goddamn good and well what you're talking about, Glen."

If anyone really doesn't know what I'm talking about, then check out the recent thread at Daily Kos (that shining light of tolerance and liberal humanism) dealing with Alan Keyes' allegedly gay daughter. I call it vile, I call it pandering to low sentiment, but you can make up your own mind.

Andrew Lazarus: "the GOP campaign's reliance on bigots' votes is also their problem."

I suspect that the Kerry campaign feels exactly the same way, and that's why they resorted to this disastrous tactic. I would say that their condescending opinion of the public has backfired.

Joe, do you remember what Mary Cheney's specific role was in the 2000 Bush campaign?

Mary Cheney is a professional activist, for BC and for Coors. The idea that her privacy is being violated is ridiculous. Anything but watching Bush admit he's ignoring Osama, eh?

And to Mark in Mexico, yes, that was funny about the 1918 flu epidemic. Especially the part about the death toll being 20-40 million, including at least 675,000 in this country, in a year (more, respectively, then the world and the US lost in WWI).

Maybe that strain of influenza is gone. Maybe another strain could emerge just as nasty, say, some new variant of avian flu. And the US government, through the CDC, has taken on the duty of preventing it. Losing almost half the vaccine supply, with no more coming given the long lead-time needed, is certainly hilarious in light of the ordinary (36,000) mortality rates in a flu season.

Sure it's funny. I suppose after my own experience, watching the HIV epidemic in the Bay Area, anything else is a laugh. And, I suppose, this is very much in line with this thread's clueless/classless theme.

Almost as funny as the fact, in an election this close, that the criterion for selecting the next President may be which one had the best comeback about Mary Cheney.

Yeah, Glen; I know what you're talking about. You like hanging with anti-gay bigots, and you still haven't explained the "vile insinuation" remark.

Calling an open lesbian a lesbian is an insinuation is simply a solecism. The reason you don't want to discuss "vile" is that you simply don't wish to admit that many Bush voters think just that of lesbianism.

I didn't approve of what happened to Maya Keyes (although the pictures of her kissing another woman come from her own blog) although it is sometimes very hard to stand up for what's moral when the immoral choice is so funny and deflates so pompous a hypocrite as Alan Keyes. Let's keep these women separate, OK? Or do they all look alike to you?

Andrew Lazarus: You like hanging with anti-gay bigots, and you still haven't explained the "vile insinuation" remark.

Your attitude provides such a perfect example of what I'm saying that a response is almost superfluous, but hi ho, hi ho, it's off to work we go ...

A reference to Mary Cheney's sexuality was insinuated (to introduce or insert by subtle and artful means)into a debate, not once but twice, and the second time (just in case anybody didn't get it the first time) the blunt word lesbian was used. The question is, what are Kerry and Edwards trying to communicate here, and to whom? You yourself spotted it right off, and I quote thee: "Kerry hopes to demoralize those Bush supporters who are anti-gay bigots, implying that Bush doesn't hate homosexuals as much as they do, and might even be faking it."

I call that vile, and making kissy-face at bigotry. Call me crazy, but I'm not the problem - Kerry's problem is that a lot of people watching the debate made the same instant connection that you did, only they didn't like the tactic one bit.

And you say: The reason you don't want to discuss "vile" is that you simply don't wish to admit that many Bush voters think just that of lesbianism.

For cogent discussion of "vile", see above.

Now stay tuned for some breaking news from fly-over country: Very many Republicans and Democrats, north and south, rich and poor, religious or otherwise, are not comfortable hearing the word lesbian at the dinner table. Some of these people are bigots. Very many of them, however, are neither bigots nor bad people. They are excruciatingly uncomfortable with public discussion of sex, period.

It's beside the point to argue - as I would - that public discussion of sex is necessary, given the issues that we face. The point is, it looks very much like Kerry and Edwards tried to reach out for that sore spot and massage it to their own advantage. And maybe to massage that bigotry too - again, you saw it yourself.

And you say: ... it is sometimes very hard to stand up for what's moral when the immoral choice is so funny and deflates so pompous a hypocrite as Alan Keyes.

And it is that unpleasant sentiment that (in my opinion) Kerry was really trying to rouse. The question is whether he gained more from pleasing people like you, than he lost by displeasing all those old ladies in Salt Lake City.

And you ask, "do they all look alike to you?"

What, Republicans? Obviously they all look alike to you.

Ah, Glen, in case you forgot, it was Bob Schieffer who insinuated sexual orientation into the debate. It was a little late in the day to nix the topic.

As for fly-over country, sex, and the dinner table: I'd been hearing TV was getting more and more racy (I don't have one). My bad.

the whole 'why do you think she's a TARGET? because you think homosexuality is WRONG, BIGOT?' is pretty asinine and actually insulting when used against people of obvious good will. people (that weren't wearing ideological blinders) got the impression that she was a 'target' because Kerry gratuitously used her as an example to make a point for no apparent reason other than the fact that he thought it'd be a good wedge issue, obviously. typically clumsy, base politicking on Kerry's part. using daughters as a wedge is pretty low, especially when the Cheneys have been supportive of Mary (and vice versa) and are dealing with a difficult personal/professional conflict in a perfectly respectable way (e.g. 'we love and completely support our daughter, but leave her sexuality out of your politics').

moreover, this kind of moral absolutism ('it's not wrong to use your opponent's running mate's daughter to score political points so long as you are on the right side of the debate') is ESPECIALLY hard to take when Kerry has been so weak on gay rights himself. he supported the fucking anti-gay marriage amendment in Massachussetts, for Christ's sake! if he was believable as a real advocate for gay rights, if he believes that it's a moral imperative to consistently and openly voice support for gay equality, it'd be easier to take, at least he'd be principled, like Howard Dean on this issue.

as it is he's just one fence sitter scoring points off another fence sitter's daughter at his political convenience. 'larger truths' about party politics aside, it's pretty tasteless at least. I fully support Marriage Equality and all other forms of equality for the G/L/Ts, I was overjoyed when a few of my friends were married in SF and Massachussetts this past year (and crushed when the SF marriage was annulled), and I've got a lot of love for the many homos, married or not, in my life: I believe that it's a serious moral issue that merits consistent support, and Kerry has shown no clear sense of either seriousness or consistency on this. he is no great friend of the community and he has no right to use Mary Cheney to score points on her dad's boss.

I think it can be agreed, by AJL, Praktike, Joe, that this was a CONSCIOUS move by Kerry.

Refer to a previous comment posting, on the Cheney/Edwards debate.

If Jon Stewart notices the loud emphasis, we have to admit that something is going on here.

So Kerry is LOUDLY stating for the record, Mary Cheney's identity. And it does come off in the manner that John Stewart satirizes.

Now, I think the argument made is, since the question posed to Bush and Kerry WAS about the FMA, is it is perfectly fine to expose the hypocrisy of a president who supports the FMA, by pointing out that the FMA DOES marginalizes the identity of the Vice President's daughter.

THAT is the hypocrisy that we should be looking at.

Brazen. And definitely opportunistic. And most likely ALSO going against the wishes of Mary Cheney (whether she is out or not, I doubt Kerry asked her).

Basically, Kerry IS using Mary Cheney as an UNWILLING symbol of Bush's hypocrisy.

I don't like that.

But this argument can ONLY be made, by people who:

1. Do NOT agree with the President's stand on the FMA,and loudly criticize it.
2. Those who make the argument that Cheney's "proclivities" shouldn't be mentioned no matter what the context, ARE BUYING INTO the "shame" of homosexuality. Andrew Sullivan makes this point more clearly. There SHOULDN'T be any shame associated with talking about Mary Cheney's sexuality, the same way there shouldn't be shame associated with talking about one's red hair, or one's wife/husband, or whatever. This should be a VALUE NEUTRAL discussion.

A lot of the "for shame" arguments here seem to miss that point.

As an example of the latter type, at Fox and Friends E.D. Hill says the following:

Hill: "You know what? That's like if you talk to an alcoholic's family and you say, boy, that kid of yours sure is a wino, but you know, you're really dealing with it well and I'm sure that he has no choice about being a wino. I mean really that's what it is. I'm sorry. Senator Kerry, there's nothing you can say here. It is what it is."

(Above from Atrios)

The statement above is totally wrong. That is NOT what it is like.

JC, it's not that Mary Cheney's proclivities shouldn't be mentioned - it's that MARY CHENEY shouldn't be mentioned as a talking point in any political issue. I don't care if it's Iraq, or venegatarianism, or what.

This is about someone as a human being and family member first, and secondarily as a political issue, and the fact that you're reversing the order is the heart of your problem.

Find another way to make this point, there are hundreds; and if you want to make the point with a human story, be a civilized human being and get it from a consenting adult rather than using your opponents' kid. Your opponents' kids are OUT OF BOUNDS, unless they explicitly make themselves political players in the campaign.

Or unless you have no class and minimal decency.

The "any means are legitimate, she's fair game" attitude here from people I considered ethical and reasonable is stunning to me.

Well, again, Joe, that's why I said "I don't like that".

I doesn't feel right to me, and is cheap to boot. It feels dishonorable.

And yet a lot of the "faux" outrage doesn't feel right to me either, and seems opportunistic. And the President's stand seems dishonorable. The "hiding" of Mary Cheney when the families of the candidates come on stage feels dishonorable.

I'm confused...

You're seriously telling me that the identity of the 2000 Bush/Cheney liaison to the h*m*sexual community is off-limits in the campaign?

This outrage is totally manufactured. We need Claude Rains [Shocked! Shocked!] to do it justice.

Joe,

To respond to an earlier post of yours, I don't think I misread you. I am suggesting that Bob Schiefer, George Bush and John Kerry wrenched a debate on domestic policy off onto what people are, rather than what the duties of government are to them as individuals and as households. Schiefer asked a stupid question, got a non-sequiteur from the President and a wave of the bloody shirt from John Kerry.

Kerry could have gone after Bush on the flu vaccine failure, or at least the President's failure to realize it was a US firm involved. That was a big gaffe, and no pundit seems to have noticed. Or cared.

He could've gone after Bush on the environment. Trouble is, enviros talk too much about endangered species and not much about the air and water endangering people -- e.g., the infant mortality and toxicity implicated in a recent five-part SF Chronicle series. (Inadequate pre-natal care a contributing factor but that could lead to a talking point about US health policy -- and pro-life inconsistencies.) He didn't bring this up either.

To bring it back to this thread, and Mary Cheney, Joe, I'd suggest that Kerry could've left off the gratuitous Mary Cheney remark and said, instead, that the issue wasn't who people are but, as US citizens, what their government owes them under the mandate of "equal protection under the law." (He also missed a chance to nail the President down on whether he wants to ban civil unions as well, which would have revealed much). George Bush could've stopped speaking after his "dignity and tolerance" point and not added, in effect, "but forget about setting up a stable household."

(Memo to Bob Schiefer, you clueless twit: who cares if it's a choice or innate? Being a US citizen is innate. What is government's duty to US citizens and their households? This was a policy debate, not Oprah.)

No class, no clue, and this from all three talking heads in that debate. And we're left flaming each other about Mary Cheney while domestic issues get the most shallow discussion. That, Joe, is my clueless/classness point: not why it's c/c to bring her up but why it's c/c to be having this discussion. A lot of other blogs and pundits are talking about mentioning her but maybe we could go one step further, here?

Unethical to mention her, maybe. But how bout gratuitous, if not somewhat irrelevant?

PS to Mr. Hedleston, you said, "I hope Kerry keeps discussing it and Mrs. Edwards keeps offering her 2 cents as well. This is a sure vote getter for KE. If nothing happens this weekend, it may still be in the news Monday! Could lead to a Democrat landslide." Kerry would be well advised to change the subject because it won't be a vote-getter. Turn voters off, yes. If this is still in the news Monday then the republic is truly unclued.

”KERRY: We're all God's children, Bob. And I think if you were to talk to Dick Cheney's daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she's being who she was, she's being who she was born as.”

Personally I’m not going to throw a hissy fit about Kerry mentioning Cheney’s daughter and stating that she is a lesbian. This is a known fact that has not been hidden from public view.

Where Kerry really falls short in his statement is he put words into Cheney’s daughter’s mouth. She may or may not agree with Kerry on his assessment. Now you could argue that Cheney’s daughter could come out and state she either agrees with Kerry’s statement or doesn’t. She wont and Kerry’s statement will stand as is simply because no matter what Cheney’s daughter says it puts her in the spot light and in direct confrontation not only from the public at large but from other gays and lesbians as well.

Was it a cheap shot? Absolutely. I don’t think that you can argue that Kerry’s statement doesn’t literally beg Cheney’s daughter to resolve the question of choice or genetics for Kerry to affirm his own beliefs. Kerry did not have to single anyone out to get his point across yet he singled out Cheney’s daughter because he wanted to give some substantial validity to his statement.

Now to be fair about it I’ve got criminals as well as gays and possibly lesbians in my family tree. And to be honest about it the gays are accepted more graciously than the criminals which are considered out casts and not even invited to the family functions of reunions and holidays. No one asks them whether it’s choice or genetics because no one has the right to scrutinize their personal lives.

Think for a moment what the outcry would have been if the question that were asked was whether or not fast food joints should be held responsible for obesity. Could you imagine some one stating that Edwards wife is obese because that’s who she was born as. Bottom line is Kerry screwed up period. If anything he owes a public apology to Cheney’s daughter for putting his words into her mouth.

If this is still in the news Monday then the republic is truly unclued.

If nothing in Iraq happens this weekend and there are no natural disasters, this could well be in the news Monday. It could be Mr. Kerry's supermarket checkout scanner. Does this mean the republic is truly unclued?

Ultimately voters select a person to lead their country. Positions on issues are important, but a part of the decision is at the level of Would I want this guy in the fox hole next to me? Voters search throughout the campaign season for clues to what kind of a person the candidate is.

Incidents such as the supermarket scanner and posibly the Cheney remark bring the candidates off their pedestals, out of their media spun, Secret Service enforced protective bubble down to the same level as the voter where they can be seen as they really are, not as their consultants wish to define them. This is an important source of clues for voters

In the case of Bush I the clue was the scanner. If he doesn't know how a supermarket scanner works, how can he possibly relate to my problems when setting economic policy?

In the case of Kerry, it could be the Cheney gaffe. He's got to work with Cheney, might see him and his wife socially a couple of times a year. If he's willing to treat the Cheneys like this, how will he treat my kid in the military?

If it's still in the news on Monday, the People will have found that human moment of the candidate to which they can relate and upon which they make their decision. They won't be unclued; they'll be clued in.

I agree that this is an outrage and it shows John Kerry's true character, or lack there of.

This would be like President Bush making a comment that in order for Kerry to become wealthy, he had to marry the leftovers of a dead Republican.

Then again, Bush didn't even have to say it since Kerry did such a fine job of that himself.

Not only did Kerry piss off other parents by making this unnecessary statement about Cheney's daughter, he also pissed off most married women as well. Kerry's answer to the last question of the debate should leave no question about his character and I can tell you that more than a few women expressed their disdain for Kerry's lack of endearment to his wife, especially after President Bush left no doubt in anyone's mind that he truly loves his wife and children.

Talk about clueless

Question 20: What have you learned from your wife and daughters?

SCHIEFFER:
All three of us are surrounded by very strong women. We're all married to strong women. Each of us have two daughters that make us very proud.

I'd like to ask each of you, what is the most important thing you've learned from these strong women?

I am leaving Bush's answer out since we all can agree that he loves his wife.

SCHIEFFER: Sen. Kerry?

KERRY: Well, I guess the president and you and I are three examples of lucky people who married up.

(LAUGHTER)

And some would say maybe me more so than others.

Real smart, give the "rumor" the credibility we all thought it had
(LAUGHTER)

But I can take it.

I'm sure he has taken plenty of her money and plans on taking much more too!

(LAUGHTER)

Can I say, if I could just say a word about a woman that you didn't ask about, but my mom passed away a couple years ago, just before I was deciding to run. And she was in the hospital, and I went in to talk to her and tell her what I was thinking of doing.

Instead of talking about your wife, you bring up your mother??? Every married women is thinking about their husbands bringing up their mother-in-law in front of the whole nation instead of talking about his love for his wife. Kerry is the poster child of clueless.

And she looked at me from her hospital bed and she just looked at me and she said, "Remember: integrity, integrity, integrity."

So now he pissed off every married woman in the country to tell us that his mother thinks that he has a problem remembering Integrity and that it is such a big flaw that she used her last words to remind him. Does anyone else see the irony here?

Those are the three words that she left me with.

And my daughters and my wife are people who just are filled with that sense of what's right, what's wrong.

They also kick me around. They keep me honest. They don't let me get away with anything. I can sometimes take myself too seriously. They surely don't let me do that.

So I guess his wife and daughters need to kick him around to make sure he tries to show some Integrity.

And I'm blessed, as I think the president is blessed, as I said last time. I've watched him with the first lady, who I admire a great deal, and his daughters. He's a great father. And I think we're both very lucky.

Now he gives the best compliment during his entire answer to the question to someone else's wife and points out how much they love each other. In my opinion, these statements above will swing the election a lot further to Bush.

SBD

OT, but sorry, I can't stand these perpetuated urban myths.

Bush 1 was not dumbfounded by supermarket scanners.

Editorial writers were quick to seize on the notion that President Bush's 'amazement' demonstrated he had never seen a supermarket scanner before and criticized him for being out of touch with the daily concerns of ordinary Americans

And SDB, you're right.

As a wife, I was dumbfounded by the way Kerry totally glossed over Teresa. As he did it, the camera showed Bush looking at him, with his devotion to Laura still written all over his face. It was a stark contrast. On the left side of my TV was a man with a hundreds of billions of reasons to love his wife and he can't be bothered to mention anything but the billions. On the other side was a man who can't talk about his wife without getting choked up.

I told my husband, If you ever run for office and do what Kerry did, I'll wallop you into next week.

I won't say it was classless (although close). But clueless, yes indeed.

Lunacy

Andrew J. Lazarus: "This outrage is totally manufactured. We need Claude Rains [Shocked! Shocked!] to do it justice."

No, this is genuine. Lots of people think this is wrong. I am one of them.

It's like when Dick Cheney threw an f-word on an inappropriate occasion, and Michelle Malkin didn't like it and I didn't like it. We have standards that say: don't do that. Liking Dick Cheney made no difference. That Dick Cheney was on the side we favour made no difference.

If, say, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush and Lynne Cheney had done this instead of John Edwards, John F. Kerry and Elizabeth Edwards, I'd still be saying, this is unacceptable, and I assume so would Michelle Malkin. Standards are standards.

Joe caning Sinclair Broadcasting for unfair partisan behaviour is absolutely right, in the same way. This is simple.