Mary Cheney's Memoir: Or How Being a Closet Gay in the World of Bush Means Big Bucks

Mary Cheney is unusually gifted at turning what is adversity for some into great advantage for herself. While other gays receive invectives, threats, and denial of civil rights, Mary (not to be consumed with J Edgar Hoover's dress-wearing alter ego) rides the throne of intolerance toward homosexuals righteoudly toward wealth and notoriety.

Imagine another gay family besides Mary's being on the big platform for Inauguration Day, complete with her female life partner and (I believe, not sure I recall correctly) their children together. Strange on a day when gay intolerance helped win her father and his pal re-election.

But Mary's also gotten various sweetheart government contracts and little jobs ("I'm a Cheney, now pay me!") and now Simon and Schuster is paying her a $500K advance to write her memoirs. She's somewhere in her early 30s but she's going to write her memoirs. And do you now how good it will be? Well, Mary Matalin (James' Carville's other ass is heading the publisher's "conservative" division and the only thing Mary Matalin likes better than being soused is being mean-spirited to everyone but her owners.

Now, I daresay Mary Cheney only got this offer because she's a gay woman. Name one other fact about her. You can't. But of course, the book will not focus on that. Because Mary's done very well for herself riding that fence to glory for no other accomplishment than being what she is.

Damn. Most of us can't routinely play both sides against one another without destruction. But if you're Mary Cheney, you get all the privileges and wealth and none of the nasty discrimination.

As a straight woman and an American (let alone a writer who works very hard and doesn't get that kind of deal, of course), I'm sickened by this. I can only imagine how some gays must feel.