Laura Bush calls Kerry "mean" over the Mary Cheney comment in her book

[karynnj]

and rewrites history saying that that comment, a few weeks before the election, introduced gay marriage as an issue in the campaign. "Sweet" Laura told George that they shouldn't use it apparently.

As the mother of two gay daughters, both out, I thought the main part of Kerry's answer beautiful, accepting and kind. I wished that he had not mentioned Cheney, as he looked uncomfortable when he did so - and because it assumed he knew her mind. But, this question was a trap. A liberal Democrat could not answer in a way that left open that it could be a choice. Even using what some suggested, saying he never chose to be heterosexual, he just was, doesn't work if that is the default and people need to make a conscious decision to be gay - a ludicrous idea, but apparently what some on the right think. Bush, on the other hand, could answer, I don't know and go on to say coded things.

For those who actually rad the book, I doubt her opinion at that point matters, they would have already read that she did not have the moral integrity to offer condolences and apologize to the parents of the boy killed through her negligence. Now, I can't begin to image the horror and the guilt that she very likely felt, but this is just tacky - and makes me wonder what her parents were thinking at the time. They should have given her the support while she did that. Even now, 40 years later, she blames everyone and everything rather than accepting the plain, unvarnished truth - it was her fault and only her fault. She makes the entire story about her - given a boy died and parents lost a loved son, this is narcissism or at least extreme self-centerness at the extreme.

Not to mention, she refused in 2004 to criticize the SBVT.

I don't think she is evil - just an unexceptional woman raised to an exceptional position, who did at times rise up to it. But, she enjoyed an adoring media, who for whatever reason, praised her as a perfect First Lady, even though she did less than most - if not all - modern First Ladies.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2010/04/30/04_kerry_remark_on_cheneys_daughter_still_resonates/

(She also writes of the Bushes possibly being poisoned in Germany - and outrageous thing to write unless there was solid proof. I wondered if the German government and the Secret Service would respond. They haven't, but the hotel did. http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0429/german-hotel-hits-laura-bush-poison-theory/

[beachmom]

1. I saw that and was livid. What really irked me was that she

made it seem like John Kerry introduced ugliness in our politics. That what he did led directly to attacks on other candidate's families. I mean, wow what a bizarro world!!!! The reality was that the SBVT was what was unprecedented in 2004, and has had a legacy, which the Obama campaign tried to end by always praising (and never questioning) John McCain's service.

To add to what you have said based on your experience, I remember Andrew Sullivan vigorously defending what John Kerry said (and you know he is no JK fan), that one could ONLY be offended if they equate being gay to a disease like cancer. For someone who is gay or whose family member is gay, it just is. And Kerry's point was that it was not a choice. Being that she was Cheney's daughter WAS the point. Mary Cheney, as we know, is a hack so her and her mother's faux outrage over the comment was so phony it made me sick.

These archives of Sully are actually interesting to read now:

http://sullivanarchives.theatlantic.com/index.php.dish_inc-archives.2004_10_01_dish_archive.html

... Kerry wasn't scoring a direct political point against Bush. He was responding to an open-ended question about whether being gay is a choice. Now that has consequences, of course. But if you live in a world where mentioning someone's lesbianism is no big deal (and Kerry does), I can see why he wouldn't see it that way. And that's why almost no gay people have complained about this. Very few had any reaction to the comment. I didn't even notice it till the emails started coming in - all from straight people. That's because I live in a world where homosexuality is a non-issue. But many others - especially Republican parents - still do. And their worst nightmare, sadly, is a gay child. That's why they leaped to Cheney's defense. Their sympathies are with him. Mine are also with him - but with the millions of gay kids and citizens out there as well, people who are the target of his administration.

Here is another good quote from him, at the time. I never thought of Kerry opening this up on Republicans in this way, but Sully has a point (the bolded passage):

The Cheneys didn't respond to Jim DeMint's gay-baiting in South Carolina, or Alan Keyes' direct insult of their own daughter in Illinois. They have not voiced objections tio a single right-wing piece of homophobia in this campaign or the anti-gay RNC flier in Arkansas and West Virginia. But they are outraged that Kerry mentioned the simple fact of their daughter's openly gay identity. What complete b.s. In the short run, this hurts Kerry. Prevailing disapproval of homosexuality means that most people regard mentioning anybody's lesbianism as an insult and inappropriate. But long-term, the Republican bluff has been called. The GOP is run, in part, by gay men and women, its families are full of gay people, and yet it is institutionally opposed to even the most basic protections for gay couples. You can keep up a policy based on rank hypocrisy for only so long. And then it tumbles like a house of cards. Kerry just pulled one card from out of the bottom of the heap. Watch the edifice of double standards slowly implode. Gay people and their supporters will no longer acquiesce in this charade. Why on earth should we?

Actually, reading through these archives, Sully is a bigger defender of Kerry's statement than you are!!! He thinks it's GOOD that Kerry mentioned Mary Cheney by name. Republicans are hypocrites, by God. And they got exposed for it big time in October 2004.

Finally, here is a good letter:

"As the former legislative director of the Christian Coalition, I find it hilarious, ironic and shameless that those who have long employed gay bashing as a political tool are feigning their outrage over Kerry's sensitive notation of Cheney's daughter's sexual orientation. This is truly a moment of desperation for the Bushies. On the one hand they are sending out gay bashing mail and on the other hand they are sounding like charter members of the Human Rights Campaign. You've got to laugh!" - from Marshall Wittmann. Yes, I'm laughing, when I'm not crying.

Yes, Laura Bush, you are full of it. Gays did't care about it. It's only anti-gay Republicans and elites like the Cheneys looking to stay in power who did.

[karynnj]

2. Sullivan's comments are very interesting

Especially the second one. I had at that time taken Kerry's comment to have the unspoken assumption that as Mary Cheney was close to her family and the culture (not friendly to gays) that they lived it, that it would not be likely that she chose to be gay.

One thing that strikes me after reading Sullivan's comments is how weird asking this question in a political arena in 2004 really was. It was already a time where being gay was far more open than even a decade before. I suspect that the real choice was the choice that existed in earlier times. A young adolescent realizing that he or she was attracted to their own sex could hide that, date and marry (Jim McGreevey) or faced a hostile culture, possibly even the family they loved, which disapproved.

To me the big question will always be why did Scheiffer ask this rather than a far more relevant question on energy or the environment.

[wisteria]

3. She also thought her husband and her were poisoned while in Germany.

The lady has a suspicious mind and a few lose marbles. There was nothing wrong with Senator Kerry's remarks. The question he was asked was a difficult one to answer. And, we all know it was Rove and the Bush machine that introduced this into the campaign with their manipulative referendums appearing on so many ballots across the nation.
I also suspect that she may have been told to throw something into the book about Kerry-just to sell more books to rabid Republicans and this is the only thing she could come up with.

[beachmom]

4. Speaking of the "machine", I actually think the GOP machine in '04 had

more power then than it does now. The Left has a better echo chamber now that gets pushed in the mainstream much more than it did in '04, when blogs were very limited in their influence (on the left, that is), there was no lefty Keith Olbermann on MSNBC (he was less partisan then) or Rachel Maddow or Ed Schultz, no Huffington Post (love or hate it, it is extremely popular), and so on. It was a completely different landscape back then. Had it happened today, the Mary Cheney kerfuffle would have had a shorter lifecycle with a much stronger response from liberal media (that the GOP are hypocrites when it comes to gays) than it did then.

We must remember that Kerry had so many disadvantages -- less money due to his general election being longer than Bush's on public money, no real mature left wing media machine to speak of, fear of terrorism constantly distracting away from the way Bush had botched the Iraq War, and of course, a lot of Democrats who didn't fight for their candidate, figuring Kerry would lose anyway paving the way for Hillary '08. Yet he did pretty well.

[wisteria]

5. I agree with all your points and will add that he did great considering the odds working against him

[Luftmensch067]

6. Good writeup here

http://gayrights.change.org/blog/view/the_media_love_affair_between_john_kerry_and_mary_cheney

And I agree with Beachmom that the media was really even more "owned" by the Right in 2004 than it is now -- hard to believe when you look at Glenn Beck, but there are at least some alternatives now!

[Inuca]

7. I don't think that anything that Laura Bush

says matters and I never understood the "high esteem" that she was/is held in. As a public person she always seemed as a non-entity to me. Maybe simply because in comparison to her husband she was less horrible, not much od a compliment... I saw a few (thankfully very short) snippets of her horrid husband on TV in the last few days, and I it was difficult to remember the painfully long national embarrassment and sense of disgust.

[fedupinBushcountry]

8. To me

she is a "Stepford Wife" and that picture on the cover of her book is proof of that. I'm so glad they made that movie, it is the standard of republican wives.

[karynnj]

9. Here is a great "gay rights" site write up

It's 2004, and Sen. John Kerry is debating then President George W. Bush for the third and final time. A question about whether homosexuality is a choice comes up, and Sen. John Kerry mentions that Dick Cheney has a lesbian daughter.

Mind you, Sen. Kerry wasn't outing Mary Cheney. Nor was he talking ill about MC. In fact, the reason Sen. Kerry brought up Mary Cheney in the first place was to show that people on all sides of the political aisle, from Republican to Democrat, support and love gay people.

"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," Sen. Kerry said during the debate.

Given the absolute thunderstorm of criticism Sen. Kerry received from the Bush campaign for this comment, you might have thought that Sen. Kerry accused Mary Cheney of cheating on Sandra Bullock. At the time, Dick Cheney said that Sen. Kerry was exploiting his daughter (despite the fact that Dick Cheney even admitted Mary Cheney was gay during his own Vice Presidential debate with then Sen. John Edwards), and Lynne Cheney went so far as to call Sen. Kerry "not a good man."

http://gayrights.change.org/blog/view/the_media_love_affair_between_john_kerry_and_mary_cheney

They make the point that Beachmom did that the Republicans had more ability to get their message out. Putting that sentence, the only sentence on Mary Cheney together with the rest of Kerry's comment, he said nothing unkind about anyone.

All the negative connotations the Republicans spoke of came from their own selves - it is they who have a problem with homosexuality. Had the question been something neutral, which sexual orientation should be, it would be like if the question were say "being athletic" - or "being shy", there would have been no reaction. The responses ahow the ugliness within the Republicans - especially Lynne Cheney. What does it say that she called it "tawdry" and "cheap" and called Kerry a "bad man" for saying it? I wonder if Mary, caught up in politics, was insulted. I wonder if Mary ever thought it ironic that Senator Kerry had done more to protect her rights - and her father's campaign was willing across the country to take them away for political gain. Probably not - she likely thinks her rights come from being one of the elite.

[Luftmensch067]

10. I wonder about Mary, period! n/t