What killed me about the whole thing when Kerry mentioned Cheney's gay daughter is the shock and offense taken at a pretty easy going statement. He didn't say, for example, "Why do you hate your daughter, Dick?" Why the outrage? She *is* a lesbian, isn't she?
Stroll-- I couldn't think of an economical way of expressing that thought. The only reason the straightforward observation is any kind of problem (& the only reason it has political leverage) is that her father is not only relying on the support of a lot of people who don't like gay people at all, but actively encouraging that dislike. So remind me, Mary, which side is engaging in sleazy politics?
It's still a sleazy tactic. Presumably Mary Cheney supports the Republican party for other reasons beyond her father's prominence in it, and calling her out is still a personal attack, even if it's largely the Republicans' fault that mentioning her orientation is political. Plus, I'm uncomfortable with most arguments that reduce a person to an instance of a type. ('You're a lesbian therefore your political affiliation must be decided by your sexual orientation'; 'You're a woman therefore you only care about 'women's issues' and can't think about the hard policy'; 'You're black, how could you be conservative.')
I mean, I'm not thinking that Kerry's intent was just to mention it casually any more than I think the Republican machine just happened to mention that McCain's daughter is black.
Last time I checked McCain's daugher didn't wear pancake makeup to hide her skin tone, either, but it still seems like a sleazeball tactic to appeal to other people's racism even if she wasn't a covert operative.
Playing to a prejudice is still playing to a prejudice, even you don't share it. Outrage is risible, but that doesn't make it a laudable tactic.
I said this, pretty much, in the comments to the post linked in 7, but I don't think it's at all the same as what the Bush campaign did with regards to McCain's daughter.
The difference is that Kerry wasn't appealing to the bigots. The implicit argument Kerry was making wasn't "Cheney's daughter is a lesbian -- vote Democratic because Republicans are contaminated by gayness and Democrats aren't." He couldn't make that argument (which would be wrong), because everyone knows that Democrats are 'contaminated by gayness'. What he was doing was something much more like "Hey bigots -- you know I think you're all assholes. You didn't know that your boy Cheney probably thinks the same; after all, his daughter's gay. He's not sincerely on your side, he's just using you. No one's really on your side on this one." That's not appealing to the bigots; that's fucking up Cheney's attempt to appeal to them.
Cala, I wasn't entirely comfortable with it, but for one thing M. Cheney was a friggin' gay outreach coordinator for the campaign, not a private citizen. Mentioning her sexuality was about as far from dragging personal details into the limelight as mentioning that she was a Republican.
More important, as was said in the previous thread, Kerry couldn't possibly have been trying to get homophobes to vote for him, because his positions on homosexuality were overtly far more liberal than Bush's. The tactic was to try to get homophobes to stay home. I don't think it's too bad to use someone's hypocrisy against them, so long as you yourself are on the right side of the issue. That is, if you say, "My opponent stakes out position Y but in private appears to hold position X, and I hold position X too," what's wrong with that, if position X is the right one?
Anyway, the fact that the press decided that the story of that debate was Mary Cheney, rather than "Bush lies about saying he wasn't concerned about Osama," shows how totally in the tank they were.
So following your analogy, if MC were black living with a white partner and the Preznit had just endorsed a constitutional ban on interracial marriage, it would have been sleaze tactics to bring up her skin tone because a non-negligible fraction of Bush voters are a buncha racists?
Kerry couldn't possibly have been trying to get homophobes to vote for him
Part of campaigning in a low-turnout environment is to dissuade your opponent's voter base from going to the polls. They might not swing (npi) your way, but their abstention still helps you.
In our cheap opinion, both parties were playing to the bigots. Bush capitalizes on bigotry by promoting a different-genitalia-only marriage amendment, and Kerry capitalizes on bigotry by noting Cheney's deep attachment to one of the devil-spawned. The analogy would be a political opponent of Gov. Wallace noting that he has a black daughter (who knows). Yeah, it's short-circuiting Wallace's appeal to racists. But it's doing so by appealing to racists. Ditto for Kerry.
Mary Cheney still strikes me as sympathetic, her dubious choice of political affiliation notwithstanding. Politics aside, she's like a nun whose father is a prolific porn star. And that can't be easy. Imagine what all the other nuns say to her.
Because it's not occuring in a vacuum, I guess, given the anti-gay prejudice that exists. It's not like mentioning that say, Mary Cheney received financial aid and now she's working for people who would cut it.
It's certainly not equivalent to the Bush campaign smearing McCain (esp., as I recall, they implied that she was the product of an affair). But I think it's still pretty shaky.
Kerry wasn't trying to get the bigots to vote for him; they're a lost cause. But I don't think it's as simple as 'I think you're a bunch of hypocrites.' If he But why say it? To call their bluff? To convince them not to back the Bush campaign as strongly? It's still an appeal to p
Because it's not occuring in a vacuum, I guess, given the anti-gay prejudice that exists. It's not like mentioning that say, Mary Cheney received financial aid and now she's working for people who would cut it.
It's certainly not equivalent to the Bush campaign smearing McCain (esp., as I recall, they implied that she was the product of an affair). But I think it's still pretty shaky.
Kerry wasn't trying to get the bigots to vote for him; they're a lost cause as far as the Democrats are concerned, one would hope.
On the other hand, he does clearly benefit from stirring up anti-gay complicated sentiment within the Republican ranks, and while he wouldn't gain any votes directly, it still isn't what I'd hope for in a candidate purportedly representing gay rights.
The reason is that MC was a de facto covert operative. As Matt pointed out, she was the gay outreach coordinator for the campaign, but that's akin to the Alabama Gun Club outreach coordinator for the Kerry campaign. Yes you'd like to make inroads into that demographic but Good Lord don't let the rest of your constituency find out. So what Kerry did was put the spotlight on the covert operation, and that's what got the wingers all in a huff. In the world of Swift Boat campaigning, it's a perfectly acceptable tactic to me. I would think differently if MC wasn't quasi-public person.
I presume the Republican party is as big a tent as the Democratic one, and I think I'm willing to cut MC a fair amount of slack for working for her dad, who she probably feels a reasonable amount of personal loyalty to even if the party's gone off the rails. (It's not like she can really go work for the Democrats.)
Plus, to be honest, yelling that Republicans are hypocrites hasn't been a great political tactic. Hypocrisy charges stick more against Democrats.
Which connects to something perhaps utterly petty but: The article FL linked described MC as "publicity-shy." Um, if that were so she wouldn't have written the fucking book. She's willing to pretend to be publicity-shy when it works to her advantage, just as she was willing to pretend to be a private person when it was politically convenient.
This doesn't have any particular bearing on what Kerry did, I just wanted to note that MC seems to be a class act like her dad.
See, that just strikes me as nuts. First, who cares about cutting Mary Cheney slack? The comment didn't do her, personally, a blessed bit of harm. She's out of the closet, and works as a gay outreach coordinator -- there's no one who she comes in personal contact with her who didn't know she was gay. So worrying about it as a personal attack on her is silly.
On the other hand, he does clearly benefit from stirring up anti-gay complicated sentiment within the Republican ranks, and while he wouldn't gain any votes directly, it still isn't what I'd hope for in a candidate purportedly representing gay rights.
Here, I just don't see the problem. He's not trying to get a single vote from a bigot. He's trying to keep people from voting on the basis of their bigotry. When anti-gay bigots stay home, that's good for gays: what better thing could a 'candidate purportedly representing gay rights' do than cause them to stay home?
Plus, to be honest, yelling that Republicans are hypocrites hasn't been a great political tactic. Hypocrisy charges stick more against Democrats.
Cala's probably right about this -- the quote didn't work out well (though as I said I think that just means the media were in the tank, if it hadn't been that it would've been something else), and in general there's this perception that Democrats don't stand for anything so we are more vulnerable to hypocrisy charges. No one seems to twig to all the morality-police Republicans with a bunch of ex-wives (Tim Hutchinson may be an exception).
No, it's a humanizing tactic. By bringing up Mary Cheney, Kerry and Edwards were saying, "You aren't engaged in some abstract project to 'preserve traditional marriage'. You're hurting real human beings with real lives and real rights - like your own daughter, dipshit."
Isn't there a lot of evidence against this presumption?
I think that was MC's role in the campaign: to tell the GLBT constituency that even if the Bush/Cheney ticket would do everything in their power to get anti-gay laws enacted, they don't have any problems with you voting for them.
Come on, people. She wasn't just the campaign's gay outreach coordinator; she was a professional homosexual, for crying out loud.
"Before she became a public enigma, she used to earn a nice living as a corporate liaison for Coors Brewing Co., going into gay bars (sometimes with Mr. International Leather 1999, who would wear his chaps and straps, according to the Advocate) to convince everyone that Coors had changed. For a long time, gay people were implored by activists to boycott Coors, based on its funding of anti-gay causes. Mary got in there, talked about Coors's new domestic-partner benefits for employees. Mary said, here, try a Coors. She was good at that, and the boycott wafted away, and you didn't see as much Bud Light in gay bars."
There isn't anything unsavory about being homosexual, and there's nothing unsavory about pointing out what somebody does for a public career. Especially when you take a break from that public career to do the same work for a campaign.
She's not offended by what Kerry or Edwards did. She's offended that they are Democrats. Fuck her and her manufactured outrage.
Because the Democrats as a whole project a very thoughtful, measured persona, one that carefully considers the issues before taking a stand (or, less charitably, projects a persona of one who polls on what color underwear to wear), hypocrisy, or supporting something you've thought about and considered false, sticks more as a charge against a Democratic candidate that it would a Republican one.
The Republican persona isn't one of nuanced thought (cowboys!), and calling them on not noticing a nuance doesn't carry the same weight, or at least not nearly as much as calling a Democrat a flip-flopper does. It's also why pointing out t3h inconsistencies in thought hasn't been a winning strategy.
And yes, it's a political claim, not a moral one, which is why I said it was a political tactic.
When anti-gay bigots stay home, that's good for gays: what better thing could a 'candidate purportedly representing gay rights' do than cause them to stay home?
I said purportedly because I'm pretty sure Kerry's position was to be as tepid as possible so as not to make any waves. Maybe just come out and say bigotry is bigotry and that's wrong?
Sure, it gets the anti-gay bigots to stay home, but it also came across as 'saying someone is gay is still a smear tactic' in a way that pointing out that Bush has daughters and his agenda would make it difficult for them to [XYZ] doesn't. It would be bad to try to get KKK members to stay home by pointing out that Rice is black (and is the first black woman such and such).
And I don't think the statement played as 'Dick, dear, think of the pain you're inflicting upon your daughter, don't you love her? dipshit.' It played as 'Hey, they're saying they're against gay marriage but didja know his daughter's gay!?!11 Don't you think that's horrible, bigots! These guys aren't really on your side in banning this, they're just duping you.'
I'd have to think about this a bit more to pin down what bothered me about it, but it seemed to carry an implicit approval of bigotry (and I don't think this was intentional) or something similar. A) You, bigots, are being duped, for the people you thought were for banning what you dislike are hypocrites. B) It is bad that you should be duped; let me tell you about all the people who are gay who they're cozy with. Normally, if I clue someone in, let them know if they're being duped, it's because I C) agree with their pursuit of their goal and D) think it's bad that the duping is thwarting their goals.
I don't think that's at all the message that Kerry intended to send, but I think that's what the 'hypocrisy' charge does in this case, especially since iirc, it was a throwaway line.
Anyhow, I'm sure I've now given this more thought than Kerry's speech writer and given the impression that the line bothered me more than it did.
Look, who the fuck cares about the morality of it -- this is the spawn of Dick Cheney, morality isn't something we really need to worry about--it didn't work. Because it struck possible voters as an attack on someone's kid. People who hate gay people knew Cheney had a lesbian daughter--we didn't keep anyone home. But we struck people like Cala badly, and some percentage of them might have voted for us and didn't.
34: My own personal consensus is that I just don't give a rat's ass about Mary Cheney. Apo's right--she's a professional gay beard for anti-gay organizations, which makes her a hypocrite, and I think pointing out hypocrisy is worth doing, generally. But w/r/t her specifically, just one big shrug.
Except, of course, for the fact that she's letting down the side so badly by being so very lame.
Kerry's move was a sleazeball one by context. It would be one thing if this weren't presidential politics on the grand stage, and during the course of some other debate Kerry interrupted Cheney to say, "Wait a second. Your daughter's gay, and you're going to tell me you support anti-gay legislation? The fuck?" But what was actually said was more polite, less compelling, and ultimately more unsavory for being a tactic that Kerry campaign leaders and speechwriters went over with a lot of ink and white-out. Maybe the targets were right-voting bigots, but the weapon was a woman who wasn't in fact so public a figure that she could be said to be some sort of figurehead or serve as common parlance for the conversation.
Also, it sort of misses the point: the legislation isn't made worse because Dick Cheney is a shitty father.
but the weapon was a woman who wasn't in fact so public a figure that she could be said to be some sort of figurehead or serve as common parlance for the conversation.
Again, who cares if it's tasteless? It's not effective, and that's all we should care about.
Isn't it fine for one candidate to question another candidates sincerity if the first candidate actually believes, and formed said belief in a non-reckless manner, that the second candidate is being insincere?
Isn't it ok to provide relevant evidence for the claim of insincerity?
I don't buy that it becomes unacceptable depending on which group cares about it. Unless the issue is that it became unacceptable (to move back from the abstract to the concrete) because Kerry didn't immediately or very closely proximately say,"As a President I strongly pro-gay rights and likely unwilling to sign any law limiting said rights" (or a functional equivalent of that statement)? Because that might make sense to me, that the problem comes from Kerry not being clear enough to the same audience about his position on the same issues.
[Thread has sort of moved on, but I spent too long writing this not to post. Also, it sort of repeats some of Weiner's previous comments.]
The context was a discussion of gay rights with a president who wants to take them away. How was that context inappropriate?
Also, it sort of misses the point: the legislation isn't made worse because Dick Cheney is a shitty father.
This is a rather myopic statement. Political rhetoric is rarely concerned with the genuine merits of various policies; it's concerned instead with the best way to galvanize support or opposition to those policies. In this case, the legislation in question is only possible because a lot of Americans simply don't see gays as real people with equal rights. As long as the debate is kept in the abstract - the "sanctity of marriage" versus the rights of some group of people you don't know or care about - we'll keep losing this debate. It needs to become visceral to have a real impact, as in these are the people whose rights you're taking away. It's harder to get more visceral than to point out that Cheney is denying his own daughter's rights in the process.
Zero-copularity might have saved Clinton from discussing the meaning of "is". On the other hand, we could also have ended up with a national dialogue over which kind of verbal relations qualify as copulation.
It's harder to get more visceral than to point out that Cheney is denying his own daughter's rights in the process.
See, it didn't play, for the reasons Armsmasher mentioned, as a visceral plea from someone who passionately cared about gay rights to think of the harm it did to real people. If Kerry really wanted a visceral plea, to humanize it, there's many better candidates.
Who would be galvanized? And what would they do? Cheney's conservative base might have stayed home if they found out Cheney's daughter was gay? (But I thought it was widely public knowledge and therefore fair game....)
Between the pains they've taken to distance her from the campaign (the convention) and that his daughter didn't choose her orientation (Cheney can't help his daughter), it's easy to paint him as a man Doing The Right Thing even though it's at personal cost to himself, or as a guy who doesn't get along with his Wayward Daughter. And I think either way is an easier sell than Cheney is a Loving Man Who Didn't Realize His Legislation Would Hurt His Daughter So He Needed to Be Reminded By His Political Opponent.
It didn't work as a humanizing move. I don't think it could have with Kerry. And if you wanted a serious humanizing move, instead of attempting to stick Cheney with a hypocrisy charge, pick a gay couple and y'know, make a nice story out of them.
And if you wanted a serious humanizing move, instead of attempting to stick Cheney with a hypocrisy charge, pick a gay couple and y'know, make a nice story out of them.
Or, as 'Smasher said, don't gay-bait on the biggest stage on earth. Do it on the ground, using other people, and with deniability for the candidates.
Between the pains they've taken to distance her from the campaign (the convention) and that his daughter didn't choose her orientation (Cheney can't help his daughter), it's easy to paint him as a man Doing The Right Thing even though it's at personal cost to himself, or as a guy who doesn't get along with his Wayward Daughter.
She was his gay outreach coordinator (or some similar title) working for his campaign as a gay person. She wasn't distanced from his campaign at all -- she was used actively by his campaign where convenient, and then swept back under the rug where inconvenient.
I've been reacting testily to you on this -- it's not that I disagree with you about how it turned out as a matter of political tactics. You're right: it turned out badly. I just can't see it as in any way wrong or sleazy. The arguments I made above convince me, for one thing, but what really clinches it for me is that I don't remember a single comment from a gay person other than Cheney herself who thought that it was in any way a wrongful thing to say.
Remember the blind black white supremacist on Dave Chapelle's show? If an opponent of his had unmasked him in front of his supporters, would the appropriate reaction be, "Oh that is so messed up, appealing to their racism like that"?
The problem with what Kerry/Edwards did is that mild homophobia is close enough to the mainstream position in the US that Republican operatives and the media were able to stick their heads in the sand and claim that pointing out someone's homosexuality was a smear, without taking any blame for that. Bullshit.
I'm not sure about the comedy show, but I think it would be pretty lowbrow for a politician who was, say, mildly anti-segregation ('Let the communities decide'), or anti-affirmative action, to point out that his opponent had a black daughter.
Especially given that mild homophobia/racism is the default position. And if Kerry/Edwards honestly didn't realize that mild homophobia is close to the American mainstream (they seem to, since their position was pretty much official mild homophobia), then no wonder their campaign's ear was so tin.
Mary Cheney is living proof that not all lesbians are the coolest people on earth.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-14-06 5:23 PM
I know, it's such a disappointment.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 05-14-06 5:37 PM
Definatly not *my* kind of lesbian.
What killed me about the whole thing when Kerry mentioned Cheney's gay daughter is the shock and offense taken at a pretty easy going statement. He didn't say, for example, "Why do you hate your daughter, Dick?" Why the outrage? She *is* a lesbian, isn't she?
Posted by Stroll | Link to this comment | 05-14-06 5:54 PM
it's remarkable what a person will say in fear of her father and his secret police force.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 05-14-06 5:58 PM
Is there any lesbian less sympathetic than Mary Cheney?
Tammy Bruce, maybe?
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 05-14-06 6:02 PM
Stroll-- I couldn't think of an economical way of expressing that thought. The only reason the straightforward observation is any kind of problem (& the only reason it has political leverage) is that her father is not only relying on the support of a lot of people who don't like gay people at all, but actively encouraging that dislike. So remind me, Mary, which side is engaging in sleazy politics?
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 05-14-06 6:07 PM
We even talked Ogged (health be unto him) away from Kaus's position on this one.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 05-14-06 6:21 PM
It's still a sleazy tactic. Presumably Mary Cheney supports the Republican party for other reasons beyond her father's prominence in it, and calling her out is still a personal attack, even if it's largely the Republicans' fault that mentioning her orientation is political. Plus, I'm uncomfortable with most arguments that reduce a person to an instance of a type. ('You're a lesbian therefore your political affiliation must be decided by your sexual orientation'; 'You're a woman therefore you only care about 'women's issues' and can't think about the hard policy'; 'You're black, how could you be conservative.')
I mean, I'm not thinking that Kerry's intent was just to mention it casually any more than I think the Republican machine just happened to mention that McCain's daughter is black.
Still, the feigned outrage was risible.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 05-14-06 7:39 PM
Why is it calling her out? Last time I checked she wasn't a covert operative in 2004.
Posted by trialsanderrors | Link to this comment | 05-14-06 8:09 PM
Last time I checked McCain's daugher didn't wear pancake makeup to hide her skin tone, either, but it still seems like a sleazeball tactic to appeal to other people's racism even if she wasn't a covert operative.
Playing to a prejudice is still playing to a prejudice, even you don't share it. Outrage is risible, but that doesn't make it a laudable tactic.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 05-14-06 8:17 PM
I said this, pretty much, in the comments to the post linked in 7, but I don't think it's at all the same as what the Bush campaign did with regards to McCain's daughter.
The difference is that Kerry wasn't appealing to the bigots. The implicit argument Kerry was making wasn't "Cheney's daughter is a lesbian -- vote Democratic because Republicans are contaminated by gayness and Democrats aren't." He couldn't make that argument (which would be wrong), because everyone knows that Democrats are 'contaminated by gayness'. What he was doing was something much more like "Hey bigots -- you know I think you're all assholes. You didn't know that your boy Cheney probably thinks the same; after all, his daughter's gay. He's not sincerely on your side, he's just using you. No one's really on your side on this one." That's not appealing to the bigots; that's fucking up Cheney's attempt to appeal to them.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-14-06 8:28 PM
Cala, I wasn't entirely comfortable with it, but for one thing M. Cheney was a friggin' gay outreach coordinator for the campaign, not a private citizen. Mentioning her sexuality was about as far from dragging personal details into the limelight as mentioning that she was a Republican.
More important, as was said in the previous thread, Kerry couldn't possibly have been trying to get homophobes to vote for him, because his positions on homosexuality were overtly far more liberal than Bush's. The tactic was to try to get homophobes to stay home. I don't think it's too bad to use someone's hypocrisy against them, so long as you yourself are on the right side of the issue. That is, if you say, "My opponent stakes out position Y but in private appears to hold position X, and I hold position X too," what's wrong with that, if position X is the right one?
Anyway, the fact that the press decided that the story of that debate was Mary Cheney, rather than "Bush lies about saying he wasn't concerned about Osama," shows how totally in the tank they were.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 05-14-06 8:30 PM
as was said in the previous thread
By someone or other, I forget who.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 05-14-06 8:32 PM
So following your analogy, if MC were black living with a white partner and the Preznit had just endorsed a constitutional ban on interracial marriage, it would have been sleaze tactics to bring up her skin tone because a non-negligible fraction of Bush voters are a buncha racists?
Posted by trialsanderrors | Link to this comment | 05-14-06 8:34 PM
Kerry couldn't possibly have been trying to get homophobes to vote for him
Part of campaigning in a low-turnout environment is to dissuade your opponent's voter base from going to the polls. They might not swing (npi) your way, but their abstention still helps you.
Posted by trialsanderrors | Link to this comment | 05-14-06 8:37 PM
Oops, shoulda continued to read the next line.
Posted by trialsanderrors | Link to this comment | 05-14-06 8:39 PM
In our cheap opinion, both parties were playing to the bigots. Bush capitalizes on bigotry by promoting a different-genitalia-only marriage amendment, and Kerry capitalizes on bigotry by noting Cheney's deep attachment to one of the devil-spawned. The analogy would be a political opponent of Gov. Wallace noting that he has a black daughter (who knows). Yeah, it's short-circuiting Wallace's appeal to racists. But it's doing so by appealing to racists. Ditto for Kerry.
Mary Cheney still strikes me as sympathetic, her dubious choice of political affiliation notwithstanding. Politics aside, she's like a nun whose father is a prolific porn star. And that can't be easy. Imagine what all the other nuns say to her.
Posted by The Nose-Bleed Section | Link to this comment | 05-14-06 8:41 PM
Because it's not occuring in a vacuum, I guess, given the anti-gay prejudice that exists. It's not like mentioning that say, Mary Cheney received financial aid and now she's working for people who would cut it.
It's certainly not equivalent to the Bush campaign smearing McCain (esp., as I recall, they implied that she was the product of an affair). But I think it's still pretty shaky.
Kerry wasn't trying to get the bigots to vote for him; they're a lost cause. But I don't think it's as simple as 'I think you're a bunch of hypocrites.' If he But why say it? To call their bluff? To convince them not to back the Bush campaign as strongly? It's still an appeal to p
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 05-14-06 8:41 PM
Because it's not occuring in a vacuum, I guess, given the anti-gay prejudice that exists. It's not like mentioning that say, Mary Cheney received financial aid and now she's working for people who would cut it.
It's certainly not equivalent to the Bush campaign smearing McCain (esp., as I recall, they implied that she was the product of an affair). But I think it's still pretty shaky.
Kerry wasn't trying to get the bigots to vote for him; they're a lost cause as far as the Democrats are concerned, one would hope.
On the other hand, he does clearly benefit from stirring up anti-gay complicated sentiment within the Republican ranks, and while he wouldn't gain any votes directly, it still isn't what I'd hope for in a candidate purportedly representing gay rights.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 05-14-06 8:45 PM
The reason is that MC was a de facto covert operative. As Matt pointed out, she was the gay outreach coordinator for the campaign, but that's akin to the Alabama Gun Club outreach coordinator for the Kerry campaign. Yes you'd like to make inroads into that demographic but Good Lord don't let the rest of your constituency find out. So what Kerry did was put the spotlight on the covert operation, and that's what got the wingers all in a huff. In the world of Swift Boat campaigning, it's a perfectly acceptable tactic to me. I would think differently if MC wasn't quasi-public person.
Posted by trialsanderrors | Link to this comment | 05-14-06 8:50 PM
14: Yeah, it would have been just as sleazeball.
I presume the Republican party is as big a tent as the Democratic one, and I think I'm willing to cut MC a fair amount of slack for working for her dad, who she probably feels a reasonable amount of personal loyalty to even if the party's gone off the rails. (It's not like she can really go work for the Democrats.)
Plus, to be honest, yelling that Republicans are hypocrites hasn't been a great political tactic. Hypocrisy charges stick more against Democrats.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 05-14-06 8:52 PM
if MC wasn't quasi-public person
Which connects to something perhaps utterly petty but: The article FL linked described MC as "publicity-shy." Um, if that were so she wouldn't have written the fucking book. She's willing to pretend to be publicity-shy when it works to her advantage, just as she was willing to pretend to be a private person when it was politically convenient.
This doesn't have any particular bearing on what Kerry did, I just wanted to note that MC seems to be a class act like her dad.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 05-14-06 8:55 PM
I presume the Republican party is as big a tent as the Democratic one
Isn't there a lot of evidence against this presumption?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 05-14-06 8:57 PM
See, that just strikes me as nuts. First, who cares about cutting Mary Cheney slack? The comment didn't do her, personally, a blessed bit of harm. She's out of the closet, and works as a gay outreach coordinator -- there's no one who she comes in personal contact with her who didn't know she was gay. So worrying about it as a personal attack on her is silly.
On the other hand, he does clearly benefit from stirring up anti-gay complicated sentiment within the Republican ranks, and while he wouldn't gain any votes directly, it still isn't what I'd hope for in a candidate purportedly representing gay rights.
Here, I just don't see the problem. He's not trying to get a single vote from a bigot. He's trying to keep people from voting on the basis of their bigotry. When anti-gay bigots stay home, that's good for gays: what better thing could a 'candidate purportedly representing gay rights' do than cause them to stay home?
Plus, to be honest, yelling that Republicans are hypocrites hasn't been a great political tactic. Hypocrisy charges stick more against Democrats.
This, I just don't understand at all.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-14-06 9:02 PM
This, I just don't understand at all.
Cala's probably right about this -- the quote didn't work out well (though as I said I think that just means the media were in the tank, if it hadn't been that it would've been something else), and in general there's this perception that Democrats don't stand for anything so we are more vulnerable to hypocrisy charges. No one seems to twig to all the morality-police Republicans with a bunch of ex-wives (Tim Hutchinson may be an exception).
But that's a political question, not a moral one.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 05-14-06 9:07 PM
"It's still a sleazy tactic."
No, it's a humanizing tactic. By bringing up Mary Cheney, Kerry and Edwards were saying, "You aren't engaged in some abstract project to 'preserve traditional marriage'. You're hurting real human beings with real lives and real rights - like your own daughter, dipshit."
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 05-14-06 9:08 PM
Isn't there a lot of evidence against this presumption?
I think that was MC's role in the campaign: to tell the GLBT constituency that even if the Bush/Cheney ticket would do everything in their power to get anti-gay laws enacted, they don't have any problems with you voting for them.
Posted by trialsanderrors | Link to this comment | 05-14-06 9:10 PM
Come on, people. She wasn't just the campaign's gay outreach coordinator; she was a professional homosexual, for crying out loud.
"Before she became a public enigma, she used to earn a nice living as a corporate liaison for Coors Brewing Co., going into gay bars (sometimes with Mr. International Leather 1999, who would wear his chaps and straps, according to the Advocate) to convince everyone that Coors had changed. For a long time, gay people were implored by activists to boycott Coors, based on its funding of anti-gay causes. Mary got in there, talked about Coors's new domestic-partner benefits for employees. Mary said, here, try a Coors. She was good at that, and the boycott wafted away, and you didn't see as much Bud Light in gay bars."
There isn't anything unsavory about being homosexual, and there's nothing unsavory about pointing out what somebody does for a public career. Especially when you take a break from that public career to do the same work for a campaign.
She's not offended by what Kerry or Edwards did. She's offended that they are Democrats. Fuck her and her manufactured outrage.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 05-14-06 9:11 PM
Because the Democrats as a whole project a very thoughtful, measured persona, one that carefully considers the issues before taking a stand (or, less charitably, projects a persona of one who polls on what color underwear to wear), hypocrisy, or supporting something you've thought about and considered false, sticks more as a charge against a Democratic candidate that it would a Republican one.
The Republican persona isn't one of nuanced thought (cowboys!), and calling them on not noticing a nuance doesn't carry the same weight, or at least not nearly as much as calling a Democrat a flip-flopper does. It's also why pointing out t3h inconsistencies in thought hasn't been a winning strategy.
And yes, it's a political claim, not a moral one, which is why I said it was a political tactic.
When anti-gay bigots stay home, that's good for gays: what better thing could a 'candidate purportedly representing gay rights' do than cause them to stay home?
I said purportedly because I'm pretty sure Kerry's position was to be as tepid as possible so as not to make any waves. Maybe just come out and say bigotry is bigotry and that's wrong?
Sure, it gets the anti-gay bigots to stay home, but it also came across as 'saying someone is gay is still a smear tactic' in a way that pointing out that Bush has daughters and his agenda would make it difficult for them to [XYZ] doesn't. It would be bad to try to get KKK members to stay home by pointing out that Rice is black (and is the first black woman such and such).
And I don't think the statement played as 'Dick, dear, think of the pain you're inflicting upon your daughter, don't you love her? dipshit.' It played as 'Hey, they're saying they're against gay marriage but didja know his daughter's gay!?!11 Don't you think that's horrible, bigots! These guys aren't really on your side in banning this, they're just duping you.'
I'd have to think about this a bit more to pin down what bothered me about it, but it seemed to carry an implicit approval of bigotry (and I don't think this was intentional) or something similar. A) You, bigots, are being duped, for the people you thought were for banning what you dislike are hypocrites. B) It is bad that you should be duped; let me tell you about all the people who are gay who they're cozy with. Normally, if I clue someone in, let them know if they're being duped, it's because I C) agree with their pursuit of their goal and D) think it's bad that the duping is thwarting their goals.
I don't think that's at all the message that Kerry intended to send, but I think that's what the 'hypocrisy' charge does in this case, especially since iirc, it was a throwaway line.
Anyhow, I'm sure I've now given this more thought than Kerry's speech writer and given the impression that the line bothered me more than it did.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 05-14-06 10:16 PM
Look, who the fuck cares about the morality of it -- this is the spawn of Dick Cheney, morality isn't something we really need to worry about--it didn't work. Because it struck possible voters as an attack on someone's kid. People who hate gay people knew Cheney had a lesbian daughter--we didn't keep anyone home. But we struck people like Cala badly, and some percentage of them might have voted for us and didn't.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 05-14-06 10:19 PM
Bah. By that measure, we should just keep rolling over and playing dead, lest we say something that might offend someone.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-14-06 10:26 PM
I think that's a bit of a reach. I'd be okay with offending bigots, but not appealing to their sense of bigotry.
(And I did vote for Kerry, but not enthusiastically.)
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 05-14-06 10:31 PM
By that measure, we should just keep rolling over and playing dead, lest we say something that might offend someone.
If the choices are another Administration like this one, or shutting up, we should all definitely STFU. How can that even be an issue?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 05-14-06 10:31 PM
So looking forward the consensus is that right now we should say, "Fuck you, Mary fucking Cheney you slimy hypocritical daughter of a cur"?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 05-14-06 10:46 PM
Sure would have made the campaign more interesting:
'Flip-flop? Fuck you.'
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 05-14-06 10:56 PM
33: Yeah, if that's the choice, but I kind of suspect it's not.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-14-06 10:57 PM
34: My own personal consensus is that I just don't give a rat's ass about Mary Cheney. Apo's right--she's a professional gay beard for anti-gay organizations, which makes her a hypocrite, and I think pointing out hypocrisy is worth doing, generally. But w/r/t her specifically, just one big shrug.
Except, of course, for the fact that she's letting down the side so badly by being so very lame.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-14-06 10:59 PM
Yeah, if that's the choice, but I kind of suspect it's not.
I think most anyone would be hard pressed to make the case that the Democrats could be winning if only they'd show a little less spine.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 05-14-06 11:01 PM
Are you familiar with Adam Nagourney?
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 05-14-06 11:07 PM
Kerry's move was a sleazeball one by context. It would be one thing if this weren't presidential politics on the grand stage, and during the course of some other debate Kerry interrupted Cheney to say, "Wait a second. Your daughter's gay, and you're going to tell me you support anti-gay legislation? The fuck?" But what was actually said was more polite, less compelling, and ultimately more unsavory for being a tactic that Kerry campaign leaders and speechwriters went over with a lot of ink and white-out. Maybe the targets were right-voting bigots, but the weapon was a woman who wasn't in fact so public a figure that she could be said to be some sort of figurehead or serve as common parlance for the conversation.
Also, it sort of misses the point: the legislation isn't made worse because Dick Cheney is a shitty father.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 05-14-06 11:13 PM
Shorter Mary Cheney: "I wish I could quit you, Preznit."
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 05-14-06 11:16 PM
but the weapon was a woman who wasn't in fact so public a figure that she could be said to be some sort of figurehead or serve as common parlance for the conversation.
Again, who cares if it's tasteless? It's not effective, and that's all we should care about.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 05-14-06 11:25 PM
Isn't it fine for one candidate to question another candidates sincerity if the first candidate actually believes, and formed said belief in a non-reckless manner, that the second candidate is being insincere?
Isn't it ok to provide relevant evidence for the claim of insincerity?
I don't buy that it becomes unacceptable depending on which group cares about it. Unless the issue is that it became unacceptable (to move back from the abstract to the concrete) because Kerry didn't immediately or very closely proximately say,"As a President I strongly pro-gay rights and likely unwilling to sign any law limiting said rights" (or a functional equivalent of that statement)? Because that might make sense to me, that the problem comes from Kerry not being clear enough to the same audience about his position on the same issues.
[Thread has sort of moved on, but I spent too long writing this not to post. Also, it sort of repeats some of Weiner's previous comments.]
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 05-14-06 11:34 PM
But is this country ready for a zero-copular President? I suspect not.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 05-14-06 11:46 PM
I needed either "am strongly" or "strongly support."
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 05-14-06 11:50 PM
Actually I think "will be" works best.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 05-14-06 11:53 PM
But is this country ready for a zero-copular President? I suspect not.
You clearly aren't.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 12:02 AM
Kerry's move was a sleazeball one by context.
The context was a discussion of gay rights with a president who wants to take them away. How was that context inappropriate?
Also, it sort of misses the point: the legislation isn't made worse because Dick Cheney is a shitty father.
This is a rather myopic statement. Political rhetoric is rarely concerned with the genuine merits of various policies; it's concerned instead with the best way to galvanize support or opposition to those policies. In this case, the legislation in question is only possible because a lot of Americans simply don't see gays as real people with equal rights. As long as the debate is kept in the abstract - the "sanctity of marriage" versus the rights of some group of people you don't know or care about - we'll keep losing this debate. It needs to become visceral to have a real impact, as in these are the people whose rights you're taking away. It's harder to get more visceral than to point out that Cheney is denying his own daughter's rights in the process.
Posted by strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 12:12 AM
Zero-copularity might have saved Clinton from discussing the meaning of "is". On the other hand, we could also have ended up with a national dialogue over which kind of verbal relations qualify as copulation.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 12:19 AM
And in response to the original question:
Is there any lesbian less sympathetic than Mary Cheney?
The answer is yes, her mom.
Posted by trialsanderrors | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 3:03 AM
It's harder to get more visceral than to point out that Cheney is denying his own daughter's rights in the process.
See, it didn't play, for the reasons Armsmasher mentioned, as a visceral plea from someone who passionately cared about gay rights to think of the harm it did to real people. If Kerry really wanted a visceral plea, to humanize it, there's many better candidates.
Who would be galvanized? And what would they do? Cheney's conservative base might have stayed home if they found out Cheney's daughter was gay? (But I thought it was widely public knowledge and therefore fair game....)
Between the pains they've taken to distance her from the campaign (the convention) and that his daughter didn't choose her orientation (Cheney can't help his daughter), it's easy to paint him as a man Doing The Right Thing even though it's at personal cost to himself, or as a guy who doesn't get along with his Wayward Daughter. And I think either way is an easier sell than Cheney is a Loving Man Who Didn't Realize His Legislation Would Hurt His Daughter So He Needed to Be Reminded By His Political Opponent.
It didn't work as a humanizing move. I don't think it could have with Kerry. And if you wanted a serious humanizing move, instead of attempting to stick Cheney with a hypocrisy charge, pick a gay couple and y'know, make a nice story out of them.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 6:53 AM
And if you wanted a serious humanizing move, instead of attempting to stick Cheney with a hypocrisy charge, pick a gay couple and y'know, make a nice story out of them.
Or, as 'Smasher said, don't gay-bait on the biggest stage on earth. Do it on the ground, using other people, and with deniability for the candidates.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 7:28 AM
Between the pains they've taken to distance her from the campaign (the convention) and that his daughter didn't choose her orientation (Cheney can't help his daughter), it's easy to paint him as a man Doing The Right Thing even though it's at personal cost to himself, or as a guy who doesn't get along with his Wayward Daughter.
She was his gay outreach coordinator (or some similar title) working for his campaign as a gay person. She wasn't distanced from his campaign at all -- she was used actively by his campaign where convenient, and then swept back under the rug where inconvenient.
I've been reacting testily to you on this -- it's not that I disagree with you about how it turned out as a matter of political tactics. You're right: it turned out badly. I just can't see it as in any way wrong or sleazy. The arguments I made above convince me, for one thing, but what really clinches it for me is that I don't remember a single comment from a gay person other than Cheney herself who thought that it was in any way a wrongful thing to say.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 7:33 AM
Yeah, other than Mary Cheney, were any gays offended by what Kerry/Edwards did? "Oh, did he just point out that she's gay? THAT IS SUCH A LOW BLOW."
Posted by Barbar | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 7:50 AM
Remember the blind black white supremacist on Dave Chapelle's show? If an opponent of his had unmasked him in front of his supporters, would the appropriate reaction be, "Oh that is so messed up, appealing to their racism like that"?
The problem with what Kerry/Edwards did is that mild homophobia is close enough to the mainstream position in the US that Republican operatives and the media were able to stick their heads in the sand and claim that pointing out someone's homosexuality was a smear, without taking any blame for that. Bullshit.
Posted by Barbar | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 7:55 AM
I'm not sure about the comedy show, but I think it would be pretty lowbrow for a politician who was, say, mildly anti-segregation ('Let the communities decide'), or anti-affirmative action, to point out that his opponent had a black daughter.
Especially given that mild homophobia/racism is the default position. And if Kerry/Edwards honestly didn't realize that mild homophobia is close to the American mainstream (they seem to, since their position was pretty much official mild homophobia), then no wonder their campaign's ear was so tin.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 8:05 AM
Between the pains they've taken to distance her from the campaign (the convention)
Picture #3
Posted by trialsanderrors | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 12:02 PM
claim that pointing out someone's homosexuality was a smear
Yeah, *that's* the really sleazy part of the whole thing.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 12:09 PM
Hm, this Page Britain person seems less sympathetic than M. Cheney.
All my illusions are crumbling.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-15-06 6:32 PM