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.
Dick Cheney places his children over his politics principles.
There, fixed it.
I'm a parent of nine, altogether, Luis, and a grandfather of one.
You going to tell me what a lousy Dad I am, too?
That's not principles, it's politics.
Principles makes parents never give up on their children like Keyes apparently has.
I don't know what kind of a Dad you are, anymore than you know the intricacies of the Keyes' household.
You're grasping, Luis.
Alan Keyes will never give up on his beloved daughter.
Unlike yourself, who is just a run-of-the-mill Keyes-hater, I know both of the parties in question.
Dr. Keyes is a man of deep principle and a great father.
But, like all parents, his kids, once grown, make their own choices and choose their own paths in life.
Points taken. We obviously have a very different point of view. From my point of view, for Jesus to have merely existed and said the things He said is not enough. Christianity is a belief in a miraculous, resurrected, living Jesus, not a philosophy.
Have a good night. I am shutting down for the day.
Grasping?
I quoted his beloved daughter, then again, you understand their relationship better than she does...or so you would have me believe.
Keyes put his politics over his daughter.
Then again, why would anyone be surprised by anything done by someone who refuses to wear the carpetbagger's shoes, even when they fit him to a "t"?
I'm not a run-of-the-mill anything, I'm a world-class hypocrite hater, and Alan is a world class hypocrite.
It's a match made in Heaven.
What's with all the gratuitous pontificating today Luis? You're usually much more capable than that.
How does you pronouncement on "principles" square with Christ's pronouncements of Matthew 10:35 and 36?
Hypocrites are by definition "actors on a stage". That's from the Greek root.
I would contend that it is you who is the hypocrite, since you wouldn't even be involved in this conversation at all if the subject weren't Alan Keyes. Your vitriol towards him compels you, though, to act as if you were somehow superior to him morally.
Ok, so now I see. Anyone who has a homosexual child, or a child in prison, a child who is not perfect, didn't love them enough? Are your children perfect? Do you believe you are perfect in your parent's eyes?
You'd think he never heard of a "time out."
Sheesh!
People like Dick Cheney are allright with their daughter's being Lesbian. People like John Kerry are postively THRILLED that Dick Cheney's daughter is a Lesbian--so he can play with it politically this way and that---let's not forget what he did with this info at the last election. It was Classic late-model Liberalism(politicize EVERYTHING , even (and maybe especially) the private), so that, in this particular case. you can IMPLY that the Cheney's have kept all this "volatile" political stuff HIDDEN, because they're "ASHAMED" of it, when in fact they are just casual, and human, about it. Let us never forget what Kerry-Edwards did in this regard. It speaks VOLUMES about the perverse strategies of the Lefties. They disgust me more than ever---bringing up Cheney's daughter and all those old associations reawakens the rancid toxicity that emanantes from every committed Liberal, and the bad smell I had in my nose all during the last Election, thanks to Kerry-Edwards.
"I believe homosexuality is a sin",
---so says dinoparty.
In this connection, Oscar Wilde, famous homosexual very harshly punished for it, said "The only sin is stupidity".
You are so right about the above and there is one thing I wanted to say about it.
So many parents today, do not want to admit even to themselves their children are wrong, including grown children. They would rather convince themselves the wrongful act is less wrong/sinful than they originally thought, or no longer wrong/sinful at all.
I believe some parents have become overprotective of their offspring. So much so that they will not admit a child is wrong nor help them to be right. And this continues into their adult childrens lives. How many times do we read articles on FR where a kid.teen/young adult has done some awful crime or act and the parent will be quoted in the article, making excuses and justifying their kid. As a society, we've lost our moral compass and quite a few young people don't even know what one is.
My bad. Not used to humor on threads on this subject.
Your antipathy toward Terry is so pronounce, I wouldn't call my statement a great intuitive leap
Heh heh, it shows?
It is now on beliefnet. Googling "Randall Terry son interview" should take you right to it.
Thanks for the link. I did see both writeups and the two interviews. Although the original article by Terry's son was only an exerpt, I read it twice and saw nothing that was contemptuous toward his father. Perhaps you could expound on it a bit. OTOH, I saw defensiveness from Randall, because he wanted to make sure that any of his son's "deviency" was certainly not his fault. He was far more antagonistic toward his son than was his son toward him. In his written piece, as I mentioned before, he said some nice things about his son and then for the remainder of the piece tore him to shreds. Neither interview shed much more.
By all means. Please do.
You've been around here for a lot of years, so I presume you lurked or participated in the Shiavo wars on the forum. Once the Schindler family hired Terry to represent them, he became a bit of a celebrity...and target here on FR. I didn't even know who he was before that. So I researched him, including his own website. I had known about Operation Rescue, but not everything. Terry has about as colored a history as any I have run into. He is a flim-flam man, censured by his church for sexual daliances with both married and single women (while married), child support evader, a fraud who solicited donations to secretly pay for his own home, an advocate of the overthrow of the government to establish a theocracy. There is of course more having to do with his activities as an extremist leader as dangerous as almost any on the left or environmental movements. But I suspect you probably know most of his history, so I will leave it at that.
"....and when they try, they act like a character in a Tex Avery cartoon."
So easy to picture, if you're a fan of animation, like I am. The tongue all the way out, feet in the air, eyes out on stems, and the "aaaaoooooogah!" noise in the background....
Hence, men should only focus on a single part of the female anatomy at any given time...
Actually, I do not. I would appreciate any supporting documentation you might care to send my way.
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