I would urge you to look at Wolcott's take:
The L Word
Posted by James Wolcott
I love the newfound solicitude for gay people being shown on MSNBC's late-night panel, particularly from Pat Buchanan, who in his rampaging homophobe days once urged Mayor Ed Koch and Governor Mario Cuomo to cancel NY's Gay Pride Parade or "be held personally responsible for the spread of the AIDS plague." (For other enlightened comments of gay outreach from Father Pat, click here and scroll down.) From the way Joe Scarborough and Pat Buchanan are trying to whip up righteous indignation, you would have thought Kerry had outed Mary Cheney tonight. I think what Kerry did was quite ingenious and useful: he deflected any future attempt to paint Democrats as the party of heathen sodomites by pointing out that the vice president's daughter is lesbian, the vice president and his wife love their daughter, sexual preference crosses political lines, so take this cultural wedge issue and stick it where it ouches--and got this across in such a caring, sharing way.
Such duplicitous sanctimony--I love it.
P.S. Atrios is also struck by MSNBC's outbreak of sham compassion.
The L Word (II)
Posted by James Wolcott
This morning Don Imus was spitting out Grape Nuts over Kerry's mention of Mary Cheney, which he condemned as sleazy and "gratuitous." This from the host of the show where there was much jocular speculation about the size of Kobe Bryant's unit based on the reports of the "vaginal tears" of his alleged victim. Who has as a regular guest the ignorant blowhard Bo Dietl, whose garbage talk about gays and other minorities gets a pass--until he goes too vilely far--because he expresses it in Bowery Boy malaprops (such as calling Hillary Clinton "lesbianic"). Imus in the Morning has been gay-unfriendly for too long to start preaching gallantry now.
And I get the feeling hearing these pundits and bloggers huff that none of the them have ever watched Will & Grace, and don't realize that that so much of what they're tiptoeing around is sashayed across our television screen with humor and brio with no one fainting anymore, and that invoking name of a woman who is openly gay is not flashing a Scarlet Letter.
Pop culture is about five years ahead of the punditry.
http://www.jameswolcott.com/
