Dick Cheney: Hypocritical bastard?
pretty much...
By Michelle Cottel
for
The New Republic
I must admit that, for a split second, Dick Cheney had me. Reading his recent campaign remarks about gay marriage--that couples should be allowed to enter into "any kind of relationship they want to," that the legal issues should be left up to the states, and that, basically, he stands on the side of "freedom for everyone"--I actually began to wonder if maybe the Vice President wasn't such a dark-hearted, autocratic jerk after all.
Certainly Cheney had to realize that his comments would cause a rumpus, since they directly contradict Bush's position that gay marriage is such a menace to the nation that nothing short of a constitutional ban is called for. (Just think of the Federal Marriage Amendment as W.'s going nuc-u-lar in the War on Sodomy.) And with the presidential race getting tighter and nastier by the second, Cheney's deviation from the campaign party line on any issue--not to mention one so near and dear to the homophobic heart of the Republican base--was sure to start tongues a' wagging. (The conservative Family Research Council has already expressed grave disappointment at Cheney's being "allowed to depart from" Bush's more righteous position. Please. Who in this administration is going to tell Darth Cheney what he is "allowed" to do?)
More shocking still, in explaining his position, Cheney went all Oprah on his audience, noting that same-sex marriage is an issue his family "is very familiar with" because he and Lynne have a gay daughter. Now, such public confession might not seem like a big deal to you or me. But back in 2000, when ABC's Cokie Roberts made some on-air remark to Lynne about daughter Mary being "openly gay," Mrs. Cheney freaked out and nearly took Cokie's head off with the fierce--and utterly false--avowal that "Mary has never declared such a thing." God only knows what kind of domestic wrath Dick might incur by destroying his wife's carefully maintained shroud of denial.
In light of all this, the Vice President's flash of dissent could, if viewed from a certain angle, be seen as compassionate, courageous--perhaps even noble. But I reject that angle. Say what you will about Dick's paternal urges; this rare deviation from the conservative straight and narrow simply highlights how, in Cheney's view, politics and policy exist largely to serve him and those close to him.
No one doubts that the Vice President's apostasy on this issue is entirely personal. If Mary weren't a lesbian, Cheney would at this very minute be somewhere deep in the red states, warning voters in that scowling, brook-no-arguments way of his that gay marriage is exactly the sort of fuzzy-headed liberal nonsense that gives aid and comfort to Al Qaeda. (Lynne would be right there beside him, blaming the whole mess on those perverted, Mapplethorpe-loving bastards over at the National Endowment for the Arts.) But because one of his kids happens to bat for the other team, suddenly Dick's a free-to-be-you-and-me, "freedom for everyone" kind of guy.
Now, I'm sure we are all very happy for Mary Cheney. But what about the members of all those other groups that Republicans so often dump on--like poor folks, or black folks, or single moms, or union members--who don't happen to have a representative in the Vice President's nuclear family? Where was Cheney's keep-government-out-of-our-personal-lives attitude when he was casting all those votes against abortion rights in Congress? Where was his concern for civil rights when he voted against busing and the Equal Rights Amendment? Where was his willingness to keep church and state separate when he was backing school prayer? And where, oh where was his respect for the sanctity of the Constitution when, just last month, Mr. Freedom-for-Everyone was running around bashing John Kerry for having voted against a flag-burning amendment?
As near as I can figure, Cheney's approach to public policy seems to be that he believes in a basic set of rules that everyone should live by--except in those cases where doing so would prove inconvenient for him or his family. Gay marriage isn't the only area in which he's invoked this personal exemption. There was also Cheney's behavior toward Iraq during his tenure as Chairman and CEO of Halliburton. Despite being a hardliner about America's not doing business with Saddam, Chief Executive Cheney conveniently looked the other way while his firm's foreign subsidiaries made millions selling oil-drilling equipment to Baghdad.
I understand that all politics are personal. But are we really supposed to applaud a man who strays from his pinched ideological worldview only when it serves to benefit himself or someone in his circle of intimates? That's not compassionate conservativism; that's political cronyism (or, in Mary's case, nepotism).
Of course, if having personal ties to an issue is what it takes to get the Vice President in touch with his softer side, we should probably all be rooting for Cheney to discover that, in addition to having a gay daughter, he also has a couple of black grandkids, an illegal immigrant cousin, an aunt with a drug habit, a transsexual brother, a sister who just got laid off from a textile mill in North Carolina, and a long-lost son who's been getting his butt shot at in Najaf.
With enough rabble-rousers, poor folk, and minorities in the family, the Vice President might actually be forced to become a tolerant, compassionate kind of guy. Barring that, we can only hope that enough swing-voters see through Dick's freedom-for-everyone b.s. to send the dark-hearted, autocratic jerk back to Wyoming come November.
Michelle Cottle is a senior editor at TNR.
By Michelle Cottel
for
The New Republic
I must admit that, for a split second, Dick Cheney had me. Reading his recent campaign remarks about gay marriage--that couples should be allowed to enter into "any kind of relationship they want to," that the legal issues should be left up to the states, and that, basically, he stands on the side of "freedom for everyone"--I actually began to wonder if maybe the Vice President wasn't such a dark-hearted, autocratic jerk after all.
Certainly Cheney had to realize that his comments would cause a rumpus, since they directly contradict Bush's position that gay marriage is such a menace to the nation that nothing short of a constitutional ban is called for. (Just think of the Federal Marriage Amendment as W.'s going nuc-u-lar in the War on Sodomy.) And with the presidential race getting tighter and nastier by the second, Cheney's deviation from the campaign party line on any issue--not to mention one so near and dear to the homophobic heart of the Republican base--was sure to start tongues a' wagging. (The conservative Family Research Council has already expressed grave disappointment at Cheney's being "allowed to depart from" Bush's more righteous position. Please. Who in this administration is going to tell Darth Cheney what he is "allowed" to do?)
More shocking still, in explaining his position, Cheney went all Oprah on his audience, noting that same-sex marriage is an issue his family "is very familiar with" because he and Lynne have a gay daughter. Now, such public confession might not seem like a big deal to you or me. But back in 2000, when ABC's Cokie Roberts made some on-air remark to Lynne about daughter Mary being "openly gay," Mrs. Cheney freaked out and nearly took Cokie's head off with the fierce--and utterly false--avowal that "Mary has never declared such a thing." God only knows what kind of domestic wrath Dick might incur by destroying his wife's carefully maintained shroud of denial.
In light of all this, the Vice President's flash of dissent could, if viewed from a certain angle, be seen as compassionate, courageous--perhaps even noble. But I reject that angle. Say what you will about Dick's paternal urges; this rare deviation from the conservative straight and narrow simply highlights how, in Cheney's view, politics and policy exist largely to serve him and those close to him.
No one doubts that the Vice President's apostasy on this issue is entirely personal. If Mary weren't a lesbian, Cheney would at this very minute be somewhere deep in the red states, warning voters in that scowling, brook-no-arguments way of his that gay marriage is exactly the sort of fuzzy-headed liberal nonsense that gives aid and comfort to Al Qaeda. (Lynne would be right there beside him, blaming the whole mess on those perverted, Mapplethorpe-loving bastards over at the National Endowment for the Arts.) But because one of his kids happens to bat for the other team, suddenly Dick's a free-to-be-you-and-me, "freedom for everyone" kind of guy.
Now, I'm sure we are all very happy for Mary Cheney. But what about the members of all those other groups that Republicans so often dump on--like poor folks, or black folks, or single moms, or union members--who don't happen to have a representative in the Vice President's nuclear family? Where was Cheney's keep-government-out-of-our-personal-lives attitude when he was casting all those votes against abortion rights in Congress? Where was his concern for civil rights when he voted against busing and the Equal Rights Amendment? Where was his willingness to keep church and state separate when he was backing school prayer? And where, oh where was his respect for the sanctity of the Constitution when, just last month, Mr. Freedom-for-Everyone was running around bashing John Kerry for having voted against a flag-burning amendment?
As near as I can figure, Cheney's approach to public policy seems to be that he believes in a basic set of rules that everyone should live by--except in those cases where doing so would prove inconvenient for him or his family. Gay marriage isn't the only area in which he's invoked this personal exemption. There was also Cheney's behavior toward Iraq during his tenure as Chairman and CEO of Halliburton. Despite being a hardliner about America's not doing business with Saddam, Chief Executive Cheney conveniently looked the other way while his firm's foreign subsidiaries made millions selling oil-drilling equipment to Baghdad.
I understand that all politics are personal. But are we really supposed to applaud a man who strays from his pinched ideological worldview only when it serves to benefit himself or someone in his circle of intimates? That's not compassionate conservativism; that's political cronyism (or, in Mary's case, nepotism).
Of course, if having personal ties to an issue is what it takes to get the Vice President in touch with his softer side, we should probably all be rooting for Cheney to discover that, in addition to having a gay daughter, he also has a couple of black grandkids, an illegal immigrant cousin, an aunt with a drug habit, a transsexual brother, a sister who just got laid off from a textile mill in North Carolina, and a long-lost son who's been getting his butt shot at in Najaf.
With enough rabble-rousers, poor folk, and minorities in the family, the Vice President might actually be forced to become a tolerant, compassionate kind of guy. Barring that, we can only hope that enough swing-voters see through Dick's freedom-for-everyone b.s. to send the dark-hearted, autocratic jerk back to Wyoming come November.
Michelle Cottle is a senior editor at TNR.
4 Comments:
If you are going to resort to name calling and personal destruction, please also provide a link that works. This way, we can read for ourselves and judge the source.
If you're not going to resort to name calling, let me know. I'd be surprised to hear you articulate a coherent argument in support of your ideology.
Tim -
Just because someone doesn't agree with you that doesn't make that person an illogical fool. Take Colin for example - I never agree with him, but I think he is well spoken on these issues. I respect him for it.
You can disagree with me, but you don't have to be disagreeable. Please try to not make things so personal in the future.
I think we all need to raise the level of debate. There is lots of name calling on both sides and lets not turn this blog into Crossfire. Yani is a thoughtful, if politically misguided, Republican. We have all descended into name calling too much. We can talk policy and politics and not attack each other.
Post a Comment
<< Home