See Dick See Dick Scowl
It can be hard to tell when Dick Cheney is really angry. Happy or sad, the man almost always keeps a dour look on his face.
But sitting there with Wolf Blitzer on CNN, Cheney was definitely seething. You could tell by the piercing dagger-squint and the abrupt flatness in the vice president's tone.
"Frankly, you're out of line with that question," Cheney snapped.
Blitzer had just asked about the vice president's 37-year-old daughter Mary, who's about to become a mom with Heather Poe, her partner of 15 years. Mary Cheney is not secretive about any of this. She's an out lesbian. She's discussed her life in many interviews. She published a book called "Now It's My Turn."
But suddenly, several conservative Christian groups, led by James Dobson's Focus on the Family, have used the impending childbirth to sound alarms about gay parenthood.
"Mary Cheney's pregnancy raises the question of what's best for children," Focus on the Family declared. "Just because it's possible to conceive a child outside of the relationship of a married mother and father, doesn't mean it's best for the child."
The accompanying barrage has left the vice president in an uncomfortably tight squeeze. He serves a president who is firmly behind a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. And the Cheney family, like other American families, includes a gay daughter with a loving life partner who's about to be a mom.
Life does bring surprises!
So Blitzer asked the vice president for his reaction to the uproar.
As Cheney began to answer, he sounded the way most proud grandparents would.
"I'm delighted," he said. "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."
But then the vice president caught himself. He quickly turned on his questioner, saying the anchor had no right to bring up the issue at all.
Blitzer explained that he was in fact quite sympathetic to Mary and Heather, but that others had raised the issue and he was simply following up.
"That was just a question that's come up, and it's a responsible, fair question," Blitzer said.
Cheney wouldn't have any of it. "I just fundamentally disagree with your perspective," he said.
It was a strange and uncomfortable exchange. And it left some obvious questions in its wake.
Was Cheney too jumpy? Was Blitzer out of line? And how is it that a sitting vice president, famously loyal to every other position of his administration, decides to beg off in this one case?
This much is certain in our obsessively revelatory era: The family lives of those in the White House will be talked about. In the Clinton years, no one ever felt constrained from discussing the most intimate details of Bill's and Hillary's personal lives.
Now the laser focus has turned on the Bushes and the Cheneys, and they don't seem to like it any more than the Clintons did.
It's a little strange, actually, casting Dick Cheney as a big supporter of gay rights and privacy. If he didn't have a gay daughter, does anyone think the vice president would be speaking up mom-mom bundles of joy?
Too bad he doesn't have a kid fighting in Iraq. Our troops could soon be coming home!
We've been down this road before - public figures making limited exceptions from their own staunch world views, exceptions that just so happen to accommodate their own personal or family needs.
Nancy Reagan supported stem-cell research after her Ronnie got sick. Rush Limbaugh became an outspoken advocate of treatment - not prison - for people addicted to narcotics. That epiphany just so happened to arrive while Rush was being investigated for drugs.
It's live and learn, I guess!
Yet another prominent public figure, being rudely awakened by the unpredictable realities of life.
It would be nice, of course, if the newfound compassion could be applied to other peoples' families, too.
SOURCE
But sitting there with Wolf Blitzer on CNN, Cheney was definitely seething. You could tell by the piercing dagger-squint and the abrupt flatness in the vice president's tone.
"Frankly, you're out of line with that question," Cheney snapped.
Blitzer had just asked about the vice president's 37-year-old daughter Mary, who's about to become a mom with Heather Poe, her partner of 15 years. Mary Cheney is not secretive about any of this. She's an out lesbian. She's discussed her life in many interviews. She published a book called "Now It's My Turn."
But suddenly, several conservative Christian groups, led by James Dobson's Focus on the Family, have used the impending childbirth to sound alarms about gay parenthood.
"Mary Cheney's pregnancy raises the question of what's best for children," Focus on the Family declared. "Just because it's possible to conceive a child outside of the relationship of a married mother and father, doesn't mean it's best for the child."
The accompanying barrage has left the vice president in an uncomfortably tight squeeze. He serves a president who is firmly behind a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. And the Cheney family, like other American families, includes a gay daughter with a loving life partner who's about to be a mom.
Life does bring surprises!
So Blitzer asked the vice president for his reaction to the uproar.
As Cheney began to answer, he sounded the way most proud grandparents would.
"I'm delighted," he said. "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."
But then the vice president caught himself. He quickly turned on his questioner, saying the anchor had no right to bring up the issue at all.
Blitzer explained that he was in fact quite sympathetic to Mary and Heather, but that others had raised the issue and he was simply following up.
"That was just a question that's come up, and it's a responsible, fair question," Blitzer said.
Cheney wouldn't have any of it. "I just fundamentally disagree with your perspective," he said.
It was a strange and uncomfortable exchange. And it left some obvious questions in its wake.
Was Cheney too jumpy? Was Blitzer out of line? And how is it that a sitting vice president, famously loyal to every other position of his administration, decides to beg off in this one case?
This much is certain in our obsessively revelatory era: The family lives of those in the White House will be talked about. In the Clinton years, no one ever felt constrained from discussing the most intimate details of Bill's and Hillary's personal lives.
Now the laser focus has turned on the Bushes and the Cheneys, and they don't seem to like it any more than the Clintons did.
It's a little strange, actually, casting Dick Cheney as a big supporter of gay rights and privacy. If he didn't have a gay daughter, does anyone think the vice president would be speaking up mom-mom bundles of joy?
Too bad he doesn't have a kid fighting in Iraq. Our troops could soon be coming home!
We've been down this road before - public figures making limited exceptions from their own staunch world views, exceptions that just so happen to accommodate their own personal or family needs.
Nancy Reagan supported stem-cell research after her Ronnie got sick. Rush Limbaugh became an outspoken advocate of treatment - not prison - for people addicted to narcotics. That epiphany just so happened to arrive while Rush was being investigated for drugs.
It's live and learn, I guess!
Yet another prominent public figure, being rudely awakened by the unpredictable realities of life.
It would be nice, of course, if the newfound compassion could be applied to other peoples' families, too.
SOURCE
posted by Marti at 1:00 PM
0 Talk Back
Post a Comment
<< Home