Posted on 05/02/2006 1:10:54 PM PDT by meandog
New York, N.Y. – In her new memoir, NOW IT'S MY TURN(Simon & Schuster/Threshold Editions, 2006), Mary Cheney writes that when she told her parents she was gay, the first words out of her father’s mouth “were exactly the ones that I wanted to hear: ‘You’re my daughter, and I love you, and I just want you to be happy.’”
VANITY FAIR editor Todd Purdum reports that Mary Cheney tells her story in a voice very much like her father’s, and that she came out to her parents when she was a junior in high school, on a day when, after breaking up with her first girlfriend, she skipped school, ran a red light, and crashed the family car. Cheney writes that her mother hugged her, but then burst into tears, worried that she would face a life of pain and prejudice.
When Purdum asks the vice president whether he thinks gay people are born that way, Cheney scrunches up his mouth, fixes him with a look that says “Nice try,” then says: “I’m not going to get into that. Those are deeply personal questions. You can ask.”
Mary Cheney tells Purdum that her father “has very little tolerance for bullshit, pardon my French.” She also says that one common reaction from people who have read the manuscript of her book is “‘Wow, you guys really have this close-knit, loving family,’ and it always strikes me as ‘Yeah, of course we do.’ It was very surprising to me that people would think we didn’t.”
When Purdum asks Cheney if he is fatalistic about his heart disease, Cheney says, “I am. I don’t even think about it most of the time. You do those things a prudent man would do, and I live with it.” Asked what he would have for breakfast at Nora’s Fish Creek Inn, his favorite pre-fishing spot in Wilson, Wyoming, Cheney responds without missing a beat: “I’d probably have two eggs over easy, sausage and hash browns,” then hastens to add that that is not his normal breakfast. “The day I go fishing, I get off my diet,” he says.” At a roundtable lunch with reporters a couple of years ago, two who were present tell Purdum that Cheney cut his buffalo steak in bite-size pieces the moment it arrived, then proceeded to salt each side of each piece.
Cheney tells Purdum that he has not changed over the years, but perhaps many of his contemporaries think he has “because of my associations over the years, or because I came across as a reasonable guy, people have one view of me that was not necessarily an accurate reflection of my philosophy or my view of the world.”
Purdum asks Cheney if, during his “darkest night,” he has even “a little doubt” about the administration’s course. “No,” he tells Purdum. “I think we’ve done what needed to be done.” Of the debate over whether or not the administration hyped the pre-war intelligence, Cheney says, “In the end, you can argue about the quality of the intelligence and so forth, but ... I look at that whole spectrum of possibilities and options, and I think we did the right thing.”
Cheney rejects the caricature of him as the power behind the throne, insisting, “I think we have created a system that works for this president and for me, in terms of my ability to be able to contribute and participate in the process.” When Purdum says that the cartoon characterization of him must not be accurate, Cheney says, “My image might be better out there, this caricature you talk about might be avoided, if I spent more time as a public figure trying to improve my image, but that’s not why I’m here.”
Purdum reports that Cheney travels with a chemical-biological suit at all times. When he gave his friend Robin West and his twin children a ride to the White House a couple of years ago, West commented on the fact that Cheney’s motorcade varied its daily path. “And he said, ‘Yeah, we take different routes so that “The Jackal” can’t get me,’” West tells Purdum. “And then there was this big duffel bag in the middle of the backseat, and I said, ‘What’s that? It’s not very roomy in here.’ And [Cheney] said, ‘No, because it’s a chemical-biological suit,’ and he looked at it and said, ‘Robin, there’s only one. You lose.’”
Purdum talks with former New York Times reporter and former executive editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer, James Naughton, who asks of Cheney: “Does he acknowledge that he is not as pleasant as he used to be?” Naughton knew Cheney as a fellow prankster during the 1976 campaign, and all but sighs in search of an explanation as to why he is so different now. “I guess I would like to believe,” he says, “without any evidence to support it, that coming very close to death has somehow compelled him to act as though he only has so much breath and so much life, that he’s only got so much time to accomplish what he has to do. But the public figure is nothing like the private one that I remember.”
Gerald Ford tells Purdum: “He may have changed a bit, but that was required for the change of circumstances.” Ford, who will turn 93 in July, adds, “Times change, and people change as a result of that.”
“If you’re looking for a change from one point to another, being vice president is sui generis,” Lynne Cheney tells Purdum. “It’s not quite like any other job.”
The June issue of Vanity Fair hits newsstands in New York and L.A. on May 3 and nationally on May 9.
"What if your child said they were attracted to pre-teens? Or sheep?
Is it your position that all three of those are morally equivalent in all significant respects?"
Don't you?
by which method do you determine which is ok?
What's fascinating here is that Randall Terry's praise for his son is expressed in exactly the terms in which the father himself would like to be seen: as articulate, handsome, a singer and pianist (Randall himself writes songs and plays the piano very well), a debater, a potentially "formidable" politician. It's apparent that Randall not only loves his son: he identifies with him.
This is always a potent combination. Many heart-wrenching father-son conflicts turn on just that point: that he father and the son identify with each other, and thus are grieved beyond all telling by failures and shortfalls.
Randall divorced his wife of 19 years, Cindy, and then married a much younger woman who had been his political campaign secretary, all the while soliciting tons of money from the Christian community touting his leadership in defending "the sanctity of the marriage covenant." There ya go: "fraud." Then we learn that his adopted son Jamiel lived a "double life" and sold the tale of his sexual misconduct with other males to Out, a magazine that cynically capitalizes on sexual exposes.
This is all shameful and repugnant. Yet I still say that all the moral failure, pain and shame does not refute the persistence of love and the power of hoped-for healing.
I can see that this father and son love each other. That's why the failures hurt so bad.
Promise
On my honor, I will try:
To serve God and my country,
To help People at all times,
And to live by the Girl Scout Law.
Law
I will do my best to be
•honest and fair,
•friendly and helpful, •considerate and caring,
•courageous and strong, and
•responsible for what I say and do, and to
•respect myself and others,
•respect authority,
•use resources wisely,
•make the world a better place, and
be a sister to every Girl Scout
...are these principles still valid in GSA?
Those are entirely honorable sentiments, but if they answer my questions to you, I don't see how. Could you clarify?
In my experience, conservatives (except for the moonbat fringe, a la Keyes) deal with these things in a more civilized manner than leftists when presented as an acutal situation rather than an abstraction.
Thank you for your loving posts. I think you've "got it"!
Quite the 'special pleader,' aren't you?
Precisely. How any rational person can fret over the arrangement of the deck chairs on the Titanic in the face of the two real problems we face (the Wahabifascist barbarian assault and the government's inability to exercise fiscal discipline) escapes me.
Be very disappointed.
LOL! The most effective way for you to prevent that outcome is to publicly convert to some -- any -- other religion. (I'd suggest Islam, but they're pretty much fully stocked on crazy at the moment.)
Your comments (a la Keyes) are indicitive of what one commentator refered to when he said "when persecution comes to the Body of Christ in America, it will be lead by 'Christians.'"
My experience also. Most of us really are compassionate conservatives. We may hate the sin, but we really do love the sinner.
"Cause and Effect" gets pretty fuzzy when you cross the line into metaphysics.
I wonder whether we hate the sin.
"If I were your child and I told you God ordered me to kill my first born son, would you let me?"
Two answers:
1. The Bible explicitedly says that no directive from God would violate the Word, and, in fact, this was how to spot false prophets. To oversimplify (which is dangerous, but for our purposes here OK), God expressly stated that there would not be human sacrifice to Him (this directive came after the incident on the Mountain). Hence, knowing scripture, I would know you to be either intentionally lying, Satanic, or deluded.
2. I would not believe you using coming sense.
There are a lot of parents who have turned their backs on their kids for any number of problems... the fixation on conservatives and gay children is mostly press created nonsense.
Disowning has been around long before the gay rights movement....
I don't think that's the case, here. I think it's more a case of "having cake, and eating it, too."
Churches have stood fairly firm against homosexuality. It's the individual Christians that seem to have trouble disdaining the practice. Were we talking polygamy, you can bet your bottom dollar there'd be a hue and cry like none other, at least from the women.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.