The Mary Cheney controverys. Ugh.

Lynne Cheney acted disgracefully towards her daughter last night in a public political forum, and to my knowledge, no one in the mainstream press has called her on it. (Please jump in to correct me.)

Instead, they've been piling on to Kerry. Huh?

This one really got under my skin, so I wrote a piece for Salon about it and it has just posted:

John Kerry's lesbian moment

The problem seems to be a supreme lack of insight by straight people into the way gays respond to public references to their sexuality. Apparently, straight people think we cringe. That's what makes us (gays) cringe.

What's astonishing to me that none of the news organizations today seemed to check in with any gay people on this. Read the Times piece for tomorrow's paper, and you'll find the same complete failure to consider the point of view of the people they're writing about.

It has been nice to see a slew of bloggers calling the Cheney's on the hypocrisy of their charge, and Andrew Sullivan in particular has been leading the charge with a stream of dead-on entries that seek to bridge the yawning gap between straights and gays on this.

I hope my piece will too. It's a little angry in places, because I was freaking angry, but I tried to get the point across about how homos tend to look at this issue.

Update:

Thanks to Atrios for linking to the CNN poll--their front page poll, for God's sake--on this "issue," and for the hysterical "Sisters" cover. (And for the link to my story.)

So here's the CNN poll question of the day:

Do you think Sen. John Kerry went too far when he mentioned VP Dick Cheney's gay daughter in Wednesday's debate?

Huh. Did it ever occur to them to ask:

Do you think Lynne Cheney went too far when she publicly humiliated her own daughter at a campaign rally just for being a lesbian?

Amazing how they are framing this faux controversy.

Atrios also asks a crucial question:

Given the recent events, and the lack of response from Mary Cheney, our TV media should ask itself a reasonable question -- how many out gay people are regular anchors/pundits/correspondents/commentators on CBS/ABC/NBC/CNN/MSNBC/FOX?

Didn't these news outfits have just one gay person on their staff they could have asked about this? Who could have told them they had framed the entire controversy backwards?