Oh, the Humanity

Indeed, no one has used a member of Kerry’s family as a political weapon against him. Nope, no sirree, no mention of her at all…

Isn’t saying that it’s OK because Rush Limbaugh does it kind of dropping the bar more than a little? I *despise* all the shock jocks of politics who’ve destroyed political debate in this country. It started going down the tubes back when Crossfire started on CNN and reached a nadir with Sean Hannity.

But dang, if the best defense for Kerry is, “well Limbaugh does it” then truly our democracy is in an even sadder state than cynics like me thought.

if the best defense for Kerry is, “well Limbaugh does it”

Argh. Of course that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that many of the people now yelling about decency and exploitation and poor Mary Cheney were the same people who didn’t hesitate to kick Chelsea Clinton around when the opportunity presented itself. So they’re hypocrites. That’s the narrow point. There’s nothing wrong with saying ‘Spare me the Instapundits of this world and their faux handwringing.’ It’s a long way from saying ‘Sauce for the Goose’ or whatever.

More broadly, I think their attitude is all the worse given that Kerry’s comments were absolutely not an “attack” or “smear” of Mary Cheney in the way that, say, John Derbyshire’s rant about hating Chelsea Clinton was an attack, or Limbaugh calling her “the White House Dog” was a smear.

People like Ethesis don’t rise to that sort of thing, and good for them. We might disagree about whether Kerry’s comments amounted to a smear, or that Mary Cheney (campaign employee, gay outreach/activism work, sexual orientation mentioned publicly previously by her father, etc, etc) was “dragged into the campaign” by Kerry — that debate is ongoing in “Ted’s thread”:http://instapundit.com/archives/018438.php.

Kieran, your link to “Ted’s thread” is directed at a post of Glenn’s — I am sure you are not calling Ted an instapundit; you probably meant to point at this post.

For those not yet tempted, please do click through to that Derbyshire piece. These people are insane, and they are going to bully, bluff, and steal their way into power again, say the bookmakers.

When you change the subject to the Rush Limbaughs and Sean Hannitys of the world and make the discourse a discourse about hypocrisy, that is exactly what you are rhetorically doing. A strategy I’d note seems rather common in Limbaugh when I’m forced to have to listen to him. Both sides are more focused on the hypocrisy of the other than they are on the issues at hand. Thus the reason they are brought up. (Otherwise, who gives a damn what Limbaugh does? Isn’t the focus Kerry and Bush?)

Regarding the second part, yes we all know Cheney’s daughter is gay. We knew it before. That’s not the issue. The issue is why bring it up? To say it wasn’t done for strategic and emotional impact is either to be amazingly naive or to hold one’s head under the sand. People can complain about whether there is a double standard about gays. I think there is a double standard. But that’s not the point. The point is that you’re using his daughter for political advantage. It’s offensive to people regardless of the facts of the case. It’s simply an other example of how politics gets lower and lower and turns more and more people off.

But no doubt we can bring up the James Carvills or Rush Limbaughs to say, “hey, it’s not that bad, and besides, the only reason it works is because there are a bunch of homophobes out there and if you are offended you must be one.”

The issue is why bring it up?

No, Clark. The issue is, why act like it’s a smear?

But, of course, I forget: when they’re insulted it’s an offense to common decency and civility, but when we’re insulted it’s just more political correctness and evidence that the left is too sensitive and has no sense of humor.

Obviously they just learned from the master:

“Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.”
— Mel Brooks

Epist: your faulty premise is 3).

he ‘choice/destiny’ dichotomy is a wee bit simplistic, imho. An interesting perspective is offerend by Anne Fausto-Sterling‘s Sexing the body.

Sorry for posting twice. The first time, something happened to the first link, and it disappeared.

This isnt the first time that the Kerry’s have seen fit to interfer with other people’s family’s – remember Teresa Kerry and Edwards son at the Democratic convention?

And this presumptiousness underlies a deeper issue – namely who ultimately controls the family, the parents or the state?

The Kerry attitude suggests they lean towards that latter while the Republicans lean towards the former.

A particularly remarkable rightwing explanation for the Mary Mention was that Kerry was shoring up his support in the homophobic black and hispanic communities by mentioning a lesbian Republican. Another putatively homophobic constituency that Kerry was supposedly appealing to was “blue-haired old ladies”. There’s an element of desperation there, I think, desperation to make a mountain of cynical manipulation out of a molehill.

Along the lines of Juan Cole’s discussion, I think the Cheneys and other rightwingers are pretending to be angry so that they can appeal to people for whom the Mary Mention was akin to Kerry mentioning a somewhat embarrassing, unmentionable problem of Mary’s. (Plus, of course, this keeps the discussion off of Bush’s failings.)

So for example, suppose Mary Cheney had genital herpes. One could imagine this to be public knowledge, and even that Mary might be a public spokesman for sufferers of genital herpes. Still, it would not be something for Kerry to bring up, even supposing the question had been about the etiology of genital herpes. The wingers are appealing to people for whom lesbianism is akin to genital herpes.

a smear is untrue. this is true. it is however an attack. in this case it is an attack because for a significant portion of the voting public that tends to vote republican being gay is being wrong. thus kerry can manage to divide some of his opponents votes from him. in return the opponent tries to attack kerry by arguing that kerry’s attack means that kerry is not the caring liberal that he has been portrayed as, this is, to say the least, a problematic line of attack on kerry.

“Regarding the second part, yes we all know Cheney’s daughter is gay. We knew it before. That’s not the issue. The issue is why bring it up?”
I personally have a reason why this attack should be brought and more forcefully than it has been, mary cheney’s lesbianism is the lifestyle choice of privilege, her father’s party attempts to derive political benefit from hating gays, it produces legislation that is inimicable to gay people, while mary cheney is gainfully employed as professional gay republican icon for moderates to feel that supporting a hateful agenda is okay. disecting the discrepancy would be very beneficial to the body politic.

“Kerry was using Cheney’s daughter to harm her father….”

It seems that if I publicly criticized Mr. X for beating his daughter that I would be in violation of this principle.

“More thoughts here: ‘thou shall NOT speak of another’s kid in any way that could POSSIBLY be construed as negative’

Upon hearing that Mrs. Y had said that daughter above “…had probably deserved it…”, would this indeed be further proof of my error?

I’m saying that many of the people now yelling about decency and exploitation and poor Mary Cheney were the same people who didn’t hesitate to kick Chelsea Clinton around when the opportunity presented itself.

Did you actually verify this? And if you did, do you think you did enough to explicitly limit your complaint to those that are guilty of this? Or are you attempting to tar every right-winger that is complaining about the Mary Cheney mention with this hypocrisy brush?

I won’t deny that I, too, sometimes indulge in coupling hypocrisy accusations with generalizations. It’s so damn easy to just generalize “those people” (in this case and my case, the right-wingers) as all holding to some view and some behavior, and then claiming hypocrisy for the group as a whole when some particular members of that group are hypocritical. The end result is that mentally I’ve just reinforced my caricaturing of a disfavored viewpoint or group.