Wolf Blitzer's Blunder

ã Dr. Gary D. Lemmons, January 28, 2007

I am not a Dick Cheney fan.  I use to be, but I am not anymore. 

I believe that, before the war, the Vice President either lied to us or he was lied to about the saturation of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.  The fact that not one…NOT ONE…member of the American intelligence community has lost her or his job for the “false” or, at the very least, “inaccurate” information about WMDs leads me to believe that the Vice President and maybe even the President were engaged in creating a climate of fear among the American people toward Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.  The real motives, I believe, were revenge against Saddam, who George Herbert Walker Bush, the wimp, failed miserably to depose in 1991, the desire to establish a pro-U.S. state in the Shi’a crescent of that area, and the acquisition of access to a source of oil in the region.

Unfortunately, “Georgie” and “Dickey” failed to remember their 10^th grade world history class on Islam.  The Shi’a and the Sunni conflict make the Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland look like lodge brothers!

All of this aside, I think Wolf Blitizer’s treatment of the Vice President in an interview aired on CNN this past Wednesday was shabby at best.  After doing a good job grilling Vice President Cheney on the prosecution of the Iraqi War, Blitzer turned to the issue of Mary Cheney, the Vice President’s gay daughter, being pregnant.  Blitzer, obviously, was going to try to question Cheney about how he felt becoming the grandfather of a child with a gay mother and how all of that squared with Cheney’s support of the traditional family model.

Cheney responded quickly and to the point that he was proud of “all” his grandchildren and would be proud of Mary’s off-spring and that he felt Wolf was out-of-line for asking that question.

It is well known that Mary Cheney is a strong advocate of gay and lesbian rights.  At the same time she is a strong supporter of her father.  I suspect that some of her gay and lesbian friends question her as to how she can support a man who is opposed to her sexual orientation, the most personal expression of one’s self.  He is her father!

My conservative friends looked puzzled and question how the Vice President can be for the traditional family model and yet support his lesbian daughter.  She is his daughter!

The liberals, like “Wolfie”, see this as an opportunity to gore those “hypocritical” conservative family value supporters!

The truth of the matter is that, were Mary Cheney not the Vice President's daughter, she would be an inconsequential.  Her value in the grand scheme of things is null.  The issue of her sexuality is not going to save one life in Iraq or make America one iota stronger or safer.  Blitzer’s grilling of her father, the Vice President, simply had the effect of making the journalist look small and petty and wasted time on a matter not germane to the great issues of the nation.

“Wolfie” should review Journalism 101.