NYT: Weaned on Politics, Cheney Daughters Find a Place at the Table

[DeepModem Mom]

Weaned on Politics, Cheney Daughters Find a Place at the Table
By TODD S. PURDUM
Published: May 31, 2005


WASHINGTON, May 30 - The big sister is the first deputy assistant secretary of state ever to have her own Secret Service detail, having passed up lucrative offers to become a television commentator for the privilege of promoting democracy in the Middle East. The little sister may well be the first previously unknown presidential campaign aide to earn a million-dollar advance for her memoirs.

But Elizabeth and Mary Cheney are no ordinary siblings - and their parents, Dick and Lynne, are no ordinary mom and dad. Like the Adamses, Roosevelts, Tafts, Kennedys, Gores and Bushes before them, they are a family act, a foursome fully immersed in conservative politics and public policy.

In February, Liz, 38, was hired as the No. 2 official in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs at the State Department, her second tour in the region. In March, her husband, Philip J. Perry, was nominated to be general counsel for the Department of Homeland Security. That same month, Mary, 35, agreed to write about her role in running her father's re-election campaign last year and her life as the first openly gay member of a Second Family....

***

...A Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editorial, for example, condemned Mr. Perry's nomination to the Homeland Security post, which pays about $140,000, as "a pure form of nepotism not usually seen in American government" and complained that Liz, who earns $149,2000, "also feeds at the government trough."...

***

Supporters of the Cheneys, including some prominent Democrats, note that the daughters have built their own reputations, while Mr. Perry did the same as general counsel to the White House Office of Management and Budget in Mr. Bush's first term. He was brought to Homeland Security by its new secretary, Michael Chertoff, his former law partner at Latham & Watkins, where he represented the Lockheed Martin Corporation in dealings with the department. The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee has recommended him unanimously to the full Senate....


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/31/politics/31cheney.html?pagewanted=all

[roguevalley]

1. Frank Murkowski got them all beat. He made his daughter senator

in his place because she was the only one who could do the job apparently. We became the only monarchy in America at that moment.

[blue northern]

2. Really? So Mary Cheney has a place at the table, huh?

It's certainly not a place beside her family onstage at the RNC show.
Well, at least she now knows her place.
:eyes:

[PurityOfEssence]

3. Mary Cheney is a user and a coward

Why didn't she speak out against Kerry's and Edwards' references about her if they were so hurtful? Her entire "career" has been one of benefitting from her family's influence and trading on her sexuality while betraying those of the same ilk and hiding from scrutiny. She is a privileged brat with no sense of responsibility at all.

Sucking HUGE amounts of money to put a happy face on the Coors Empire, and working behind the scenes on other initiatives to deaden the justified recriminations against the forces of hatred and selfishness that her family represents, she's side-stepped and hidden from the public world while making money from the public world. The sheer hypocrisy of this person is breathtaking. The only cachet she has as a "professional" is being gay, and she's actively worked for the forces who want to marginalize (or worse) those like her. She hasn't a scrap of integrity, soul, decency, responsibility or even base humanity.

Worse than anything, she won't even show her face in public to cry crocodile tears or even defend herself. She is a shameful creature, and this fact gets a free pass in the media. Her sociopathic egotism is only checked by her lack of character. This, to the world, should be seen as the deep ugliness of patrician pretense. She's no better than a capo in a deathcamp, and the capo gets off lighter: he/she was trying to survive; her life is guaranteed luxury. Why she does what she does is a mystery to us all. Perhaps it's just opportunism from the seat of power. Perhaps she's a cynical maneuverer like Roy Cohn, but evidence doesn't seem to bear that out: Cohn actually DID THINGS HIMSELF. This entity just coasts from betrayal to betrayal without ever facing the music.

Assholism is a pan-cultural affliction, and she is beneath being beneath contempt.

Her family uses her a cheap window dressing for "tolerance", and she goes along with it.

The day she looks the world in the eye and SPEAKS FOR HERSELF is not one I'd expect to see anytime soon. Betrayal and cowardice; it's the Republican way.

[wellst0nev0ter]

4. Priviledged Brat Indeed

She's rich enough, so that means she doesn't NEED any benifits concomitant with legalized gay marriage.

Fuck em all :grr:

[Catfight]

5. Well said, my sentiments exactly, she's horrible for the gay community. nt

[earth mom]

8. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree-look who her parents are.

:puke:

[Triana]

6. Little Hitlers. How adorable. (n/t)

[Englander]

7. Elizabeth,I think it was, appeared on the...

BBC Newsnight programme a few months ago,
and made a comment about the "War On Terror",
that America is fighting for liberty,&tc,and
for freedom,& against regimes that arrest people
at 3 o'clock in the morning,against regimes who use
soldiers to abduct people in the middle of the night.

Never mind the fact that US/British/Iraqi forces do
exactly that,I guess the notion that 'Murka could be
related to,or in anyway similar to those regimes is
lost on Ms Cheney.