Rights For Me, But Not For Thee

Pam Spaulding’s fine post about how Mary Cheney is gratefully taking advantage of the benefits that the base of the party she shills for has bitterly opposed (it’s good she doesn’t live in Ohio, or her benefits would be unenforceable) reminds me of what for me was the nadir of the 2004 campaign, the ridiculously fake controversy ginned up (and flamed by hacks like Glenn Reynolds) over John Kerry’s statement that Cheney is “being who she was born as.” This remains, as far as I know, the only “gay rights” crusade in history led by Pat Buchanan but including virtually no actual gay people. Pam reminds us that Cheney “worked as Coors’ liaison with the gay community,” which would seem, to put it generously, to preclude claims that her privacy had been violated–which didn’t stop some conservatives from claiming that Cheney had been “outed.” (Admittedly, James Dobson was more upset by Kerry’s claim that “she was born that way.)

Whether this nonsense affected the campaign, I have no idea, although it certainly distracted attention from Bush’s outright lie about his statement that he wasn’t worried about bin Laden. But it was a truly rare display of hackery.