>The debate question is about family values, Bush responds about the poor values you see in America today and in Hollywood. He then calls out Kerry's daughter for showing her boobs to the whole planet with that see-through dress she wore in Cannes.
>Would that be fair game? I think not.
Once again, being a "slut" is an insult. Being a "lesbian" is not.
Some more from Andrew Sullivan on the topic:
Oh, now I get it. James Taranto is suddenly aghast and upset at gay-baiting! Better late than never, I suppose. In fact, I'm deeply heartened by so many Republicans suddenly concerned about the smearing of homosexuals for political purposes. The reason for Taranto's assertion? He says that Kerry was pandering to the anti-gay parts of the Democratic base, by letting the last few souls on earth know, in an entirely positive way, that the vice-president's daughter is openly gay. And the way Kerry "gay-baited" was to say that homosexuality is not a choice, that he supports equal rights for gay couples, and that Mary Cheney helps prove that being gay isn't a choice. That'll rile 'em up in the trenches, won't it? Seriously, I've called out anti-gay statements by Democrats in the past; and have a long record of sniffing out homophobia and the use of it, wherever it's coming from. Certainly my record is, shall we say, more substantial than Taranto's in this regard. And I fail to see how Kerry's remark could be understood in any conceivable way as gay-baiting. It never occurred to me when I heard it. It does not occur to me now. You know what is based in gay-baiting? Implicitly, clearly, shamelessly: the Bush-Cheney campaign. The GOP has a nutty candidate in Illinois who called Mary Cheney a "selfish hedonist" - but Dick Cheney wasn't an "angry dad," then. Lynne Cheney didn't call that "tawdry." So Bush runs the most anti-gay national campaign ever and it's his opponent who gets tarred as a homophobe! Brilliant, even by Rove's standards. And when it comes to gay-baiting, there are few as practised as Rove. The sheer nerve of these hypocrites never ceases to amaze.
-Z |
