corrente

Mustang Bobby at Bark Bark Woof Woof has this by Hilary Rosen (via WaPo):

The crime? John Kerry in the final presidential debate suggested that we are all God's children and used Mary Cheney as an example of a healthy gay person loved by her family.

[...]

The response from the Cheneys and the Bush campaign has been blatantly political. In fact, it is they who are using Mary Cheney -- using her now to score points against Kerry and John Edwards over an issue on which they themselves are guilty of the wrongs that Kerry and Edwards are fighting against. Even after almost 30 years in Washington, I am surprised by the overwhelming hypocrisy and meanness of the Bush reelection campaign. - continue reading... HERE

All of this feigned rankle and melodramatic outrage! surrounding remarks concerning Mary Cheney is of course the exact kind of overwrought pundit-pol theater of the aghast that Jon Stewart was pointing out on Crossfire friday afternoon. And Lynne Cheney's recent hyperventilations and foot stamping stump-stunts with respect to her family's delicate sensibilities - how dare they! - oh, the cruel and tawdry injustice of it all! .....Ooooo! - and all the scripted persecution hooha which so often oozes from the poor put upon conservative rattlebox whenever someone points to the obvious, is, old stuff for sure.

The Christian Coalition types have always been masteful at this kind of woe is me theater. For instance. How often have you had to sit back and listen as some think tank haversack of grinning bleached teeth from the American Family Association or Concerned Women for America or the Family Research Council (or any number of other right wing theocratic nut bowls) launch into one more episodic Vivien Leigh-like pang of ruefull phoney baloney anguish at the mere suggestion that one of their own may in fact be little more than a half-baked Easter ham wearing a pineapple halo - whatever that means. Or, in the case of Lynne Cheney, that some vicious monumental affront has been hurled against her family's honor, leaving the fragile dears inconsolably hurt and possibly without a gentleman caller for poor cripple Mary forevermore. Oh sure. Quick, someone glue the little horn back on the little glass horsies head before Mary discovers shes not a freak. Ay yi yi.

Anyway, the point is, it's old showbiz-style stuff. Leitmotiv. And the Cheney's are simply digging into that old used steamer trunk of costumed dragoons and shiny tinfoil daggers in order to produce a little penny dreadful opera for the benefit of their pilgrims and the easily enticed fipple flutes in the mainstream television media.

Theater of the ridiculous. Pass me a rotten vegetable please.

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