Dick Cheney, Soldier of Love
One more reason to hate Dick Cheney: he's trying to rain on my parade. Just when I think partisanship has reached its optimum level of absurdity, when we're living in full Bizarro-World mode where John Kerry's Vietnam record is more of a point of contention than George Bush's, where Republicans call Democrats anti-American traitors and Democrats call Republicans imperialist crypto-fascists and we get some really, really good mudslinging going on, the vice president does what he always does; he drops some love on us.

At a rally, someone asks Cheney about gay marriage and Dick, father of a gay daughter, had this to say:

"Look man, all this negativity has really been bringing me down. It's like the universe is this one big, giant river, man, and we're all... we're all like just drops, drops of water sliding around against each other, separate but one all at the same time. And all together we make the river, One River, that's what we are, a river of humanity just trying to get by, man, trying to flow over rocks and around mountains and stuff trying to find our way to the Ocean. And the Ocean is like God or Buddha or Jesus or L. Ron Hubbard or whatever it is you're into, man. And they, you know, The Man is trying to dam up the river and use us to turn his turbines and power his military industrial complex man, to turn our drops into bombs to drop on babies and their mothers, man, and we are just not going to play. We just want to flow, man, just flow. Why won't they just let us flow?"

OK, I'm paraphrasing, but that's close.

What he really said was that gay marriage is a "state issue" and that he personally opposes a constitutional amendment, one of the president's favorite wedge issues.

If one wanted to be cynical (and I do for the moment) they could say that he's seen the tape from the 2000 debate and decided he should cover his ass and take away a line of attack from John Edwards and thus avoid the dreaded "flip-flopper" label.

But I'm actually going to give Dick some credit. His view on gay marriage is the same as mine is on abortion: as it relates to myself personally (and it has come up although somewhat indirectly) I can't bring myself to do anything but urge against it. But as I am a thinking individual, I don't for one second expect the country as a whole to subscribe to my worldview solely on the strength that it is mine and therefore valid. So politically, I would call myself pro-choice, choice being the operative word.

So now Dick Cheney personally relates to the gay rights issue, so he can take a "nuanced" and "sensitive" position on the subject and for that he should get some credit without having anyone suggest he a wussy little girl for it.

And this is all well and good, but from here on out, hands off my Culture War, Cheney. If everyone goes around being all reasonable and thougtful you're going to force me to start watching non-cable-news television. And what would I do without all that bug-eyed, purple-faced cross talk to lull me to sleep at night?


This post on the Narcissus Scale: 2.1


Pops

- posted by Pops @ 12:05 PM