Apparently Cheney doesn’t like the fact that his political base is questioning his lesbian daughter having a child – the same thing they do to every other gay or lesbian family out there:
Vice President Cheney blew up yesterday when asked in a TV interview what he thinks of conservatives who are critical of his lesbian daughter Mary having a baby.
In a wide-ranging interview, where he was unusually testy in several instances, Cheney got steamed when CNN’s Wolf Blitzer read him a comment from Focus on the Family, a social-conservative group that believes it’s not best for a child to be raised by single-sex parents, like Mary Cheney and her partner of 15 years, Heather Poe.
“I’m delighted I’m about to have a sixth grandchild, Wolf, and obviously think the world of both of my daughters and all of my grandchildren. And I think, frankly, you’re out of line with that question,” Cheney fumed.
Seems like he’s happy enough to get their money and court their vote, so long as they leave his daughter alone. Of course, to his credit, Cheney has long been silent on the issue, so you can’t really call him a hypocrite – directly. But it does seem to me that when you sign a deal with the devil, you have to accept the entire pact. Taking money from the Moral Majority, Focus on the Family, and whatever they feel like calling themselves these days does align you with an anti-gay position. Cheney is a savvy enough man to know this.
Of course, the best part of the article is Tony Snow, as usual, who says it’s “a double standard … I think that family members ought to be off-limits.” Too bad the Republicans (and Fox News) didn’t feel that way about Chelsea, eh?
Edited
Alright, editing this to add a more concrete statement of Cheney’s opinion, which only seems fair. In a 2004 CNN interview, prior to the elections, Cheney says,
Lynne and I have a gay daughter, so it’s an issue that our family is very familiar with. With respect to the question of relationships, my general view is that freedom means freedom for everybody.
While I can understand being in a position where you have to support something you dislike as an aspect of your job, I think it would be nice if Cheney exerted a little more force on this particular issue.
In general I think family members of politicians should be off limits. That doesn’t mean that everyone plays nice. And Cheney has kind of dug his own trench here. But it also strikes me as spurious for people to make an issue out of his daughter (both left and right). All part of the basic intellectual dishonesty that pervades our culture. I am sure that Cheney is genuinely conflicted by the whole issue. As much as I like to see Cheney squirm I kind of think of it as a non-issue. At least not one worth getting all up in arms about. I was kind of disappointed by the way Edwards broached the subject in the 2004 debates.
The freedom quote is kind rich too. Where was Cheney on freedom when they decided to gut Habeas Corpus? That is a question that I wish Wolf Blitzer would ask. All the other stuff is distraction IMHO.
By the way John McCain once made the following joke about Chelsea Clinton
Talk about ugliness.
Yeah, I remember that comment McCain made about Chelsea – and she was just a teenager at the time! Ouch. (I also remember The Daily Show coverage of it, heh.)
I think one of the reasons I’ve been mulling this whole thing over is actually because of The Daily Show – I was singularly unimpressed with how they chose to cover the issue, accusing him of being a hypocrite and not wanting his party’s standards to be applied to his family.
Problem being, of course, that the Administration is not the Republican party – no more than the Moral Majority is the Republican party. Problem also being that we do have long record of him not being on the same side as Bush, with regards to gay marriage and gay rights.
It seems like the entire handling of this has been ugly in a way that, had Cheney been any Democrat, would have been covered entirely differently – and that’s bothering me.