10/30/2006

Lynne Loves Labias:
Wolf Blitzer has interviewed Lynne Cheney repeatedly on one of her bullshit books or the other. Each time, Blitzer has made clear that he was gonna get political with her and not just press his fuzzy face to her inner thighs and make soft cooing noises. On November 14, 2004, here's Blitzer saying that they were gonna talk about Dick Cheney's attempt to fool us into thinking he had a heart: "You also have a new book, When Washington Crossed the Delaware, that we're going to talk about, as well. But everyone wants to know, how is the vice president doing?" After a lengthy conversation about the health of Dick, abortion politics, and more, Blitzer came back from a break and said, "We'll get to the book in a second. A quick follow-up to one comment you made after the last debate between John Kerry and President Bush." Which was, of course, about Cheney's daughter, lesbian Mary.

And Lynne Cheney gladly spouted Republican talking point after Republican talking point, never batting her evil eyes at Blitzer's questions. On December 18, 2005, the script between Blitzer and Cheney was the same: "You're here to talk about your new book, A Time For Freedom, and we're going to talk about the book. Let's talk about some of the issues on the agenda right now."

So, you know, fuck Cheney for acting offended last Friday when Blitzer asked her not just about politics in general, but about the instance of campaign savagery done by Virginia Republican George Allen on Democrat James Webb that directly involved the Second Lady (short version: Allen says Webb writes dirty books; Webb says so does Cheney, among others). And fuck all the right-wing shit-scrawlers who think that Blitzer "blindsided" Cheney or that the CNN host "ambushed" her. But, then again, considering the consequences of invading Iraq, perhaps when something absolutely predictable happens, conservatives call it being "blindsided."

Besides, the lesbian-riffic material in the writing of Lynne Cheney doesn't begin and end with her novel, Sisters, which, and everyone on the religious right knows it whether they wanna admit it or not, probably ended up turning Mary Cheney into a muff diver. C'mon, back in 1981, Mary's an adolescent girl, thinking about exploring her sexuality, and she reads Mom's book where two women secretly enjoy labial pleasures with each other. Well, what was Sisters if not a nod and a wink to Lynne's budding daughter.

According to Cheney, regarding supposedly sexless female friendships in the book, "[S]he also knew that claiming a relationship was not erotic, thinking it could not be, would not keep it from being so. Oh, doubtless such convictions dictated limits one could not go beyond without without destroying the myth. There could be no tearing off one's clothes and lustily hopping into bed, not if one would preserve the love-religion. But the loving words and the warm embrace were permitted, and the kiss before sleep, the arousal gentle enough so that its nature would not have be acknowledged."

Beyond Sisters, though, Cheney's children's books are rife with amoral sexual overtones. When not celebrating sexual suspect Emily Dickinson in A Is for Abigail, there's the pro-miscegenation picture of Pocahantas with her hands all over the shoulders of John Smith in America: A Patriotic Primer. And let's not get into how approvingly Cheney talks about Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, no strangers to the joys of clam-eating. Or the disturbing picture of a what looks like a small white child buggering a small black child near a water fountain under the ironic heading, "Equality."

Perhaps in Lynne Cheney's world, as a right-wing insider of great import to the movement, as a politician full of self-denial, proclaiming to Blitzer that her novel is not sexual, actively working to destroy her daughter's life even as she declares love for her, that is what passes for equality.