Mastering the Media Game
By now, the uproar over Mary Cheney’s double “outing” during the presidential debates has subsided, and for good reason: it was never a problem in the first place. Dick and Lynne’s daughter has appeared or been named whenever the Bush campaign needed a “soft on gays” push.
But more importantly, Mary, a 35-year-old adult (not the helpless “child” the Republicans have circled to protect) happens to be the lesbian daughter of the number two guy in an administration hell bent on banning homosexuals from ever enjoying the benefits of legal marriage. It’s true, the vice president has voiced his disagreement with the proposed federal amendment, but only in order to protect states’ rights, not the rights of his daughter. What’s good for the president and his fundamental minions is good for the country, and Dick Cheney will be damned if he’ll let a little thing like his daughter stand in his way – of four more years.
So if it’s true that Mary Cheney has been out of the closet for a while now, and in an open and committed relationship with her female partner… and if it’s true that Cheney spoke publicly about his gay daughter as recently as this past August during an Iowa Town Hall meeting… AND if it’s true that when Illinois Republican Alan Keyes publicly labeled Mary a “selfish hedonist,” no one protested, and later, Cheney actually thanked John Edwards for his considerably kinder and more tolerant comments about Mary during the vice presidential debate… then why did Dick and Lynne turn into “a pretty angry father” and “a pretty indignant mom” post debate number four?
Because Senator John Kerry so completely trounced President George W. Bush during the debates that somebody had to do something. God forbid the Republicans lose control of the media angle for two minutes. For days, all we read was how Kerry was out of line in using the L word and how children should not be dragged into politics. Kerry – bad, bad man. Bush and Cheney – tolerant, loving fathers. What alternate universe are we living in?
The real story here is the Republican machine’s far superior mastery of the message. Mary Cheney and her sexual identity are beside the point. If Mama and Papa Bear were so upset about what Kerry had said, why did they and Bush backers everywhere flood the media with their sob story, ensuring that Mary’s sexual identity got front-page coverage for days and days? Why didn’t Mary herself write or speak out on the dastardly deed of her outing? Because it doesn’t really matter.
What does matter is that Kerry and the Democrats constantly play the game right into Republican hands. Kerry supporters aired their disapproval with the way he brought her into the fourth debate, how he said the word “lesbian,” why he should have named Congressman Barney Frank, or any other gay figure, rather than Mary. It turns out that Frank would have been a safer choice, but only because it would have left the Republicans scrambling to find some other way to control the message these last few weeks before Election Day. If it wasn’t this, it would have been something else, maybe more on the “global test,” or how Kerry wears a French beret while he eats his French fries, French-style green beans and French dressing slathered in Heinz ketchup, the better to enrich his no-tax-paying, cold-hearted philanthropist of a wife. But this was even better. Suddenly the Right is a bastion of open-hearted tolerance, one hand embracing the vice president’s distraught daughter, the other hand discreetly holding her ten feet from the alter. And the mean old liberal from Massachusetts is the one from which people demand an apology.
Does anyone else notice the irony here? It’s the same thing that’s been happening all along. CBS airs a story on Bush’s failure as an Air National Guardsman. It’s discovered that the basis of Dan Rather’s story comes from falsified documents. Suddenly, all discussion of Bush’s cowardice and pulling strings to get out of Guard duty ceases. As Bush and company breathe a huge sigh of relief, (“Thought we’d never get rid of that one”) the story turns into Rather-gate – so much so that Bush cracked a joke about the media’s credibility during a debate. Not that CBS’s failure should be swept under the rug, but have we stopped asking Bush for answers in our quest to get some from the disgraced journalist?
I’m still holding out hope that Kerry will win in November, and we can start to loosen the choke hold of the Christian Right on our society. But it’s time for the Democrats to start thinking about the future. Politics has evolved. Campaigning is not about shaking hands and kissing babies, with a little mud thrown in to keep the opponent looking dirty. It’s about who controls the message, and how they steal it back if their opponent figures out how to grab it. Kerry’s group hasn’t figured it out yet – perhaps by 2008 they’ll get it right.
