Hello? How does a xenophobic smear against Kerry's wife go unnoticed?
It comes down to this: the GOP candidate saying something that ranges from merely culturally insensitive to totally bigoted goes unnoticed because saying comments so painfully offensive that you just assume its a malapropism is a GOP stock-in-trade. But to have a VP who loves all of children, even if he is supposed to disapprove is Earth-shattering.
It raises uncomfortable questions because it challenges our assumptions.
That said, I do not believe that the Cheney's are "feining outrage." At some point, the posture on this issue became "No I'm not ashamed that my daughter is gay nor do I want to discuss it." From the ferocity of the response, from Mrs. Cheney, I get the sense that this wasn't just public posturing. This is the way that polite people agree to disagree.
It so happens that the issue is homosexuality, but the issue can be anything. Have you ever known friends where one person was a Rangers fan and the other an Islanders fan? What can not be discussed with or amongst their peers? The NHL. Normally this works out fine because they happened to be part of the same quilting bee and so they can instead talk about something else like handicraft or who shot Lincoln. They can even have strenuous disagreements about other things without hurting their friendship. But when the conversation turns to the icing rule, you quickly change the topic to something lighter, for example containing the spread of Anthrax amongst sheep populations during the settlement and domestication of the American west.
Sometimes the cognitive dissonance becomes overwhelming. Sometimes you have to talk about the white elephant in the room. Other times it's just rude.
I guess the public has decided that bringing up this up is rude while the whole, "my wife speaks good English" thing is ok.
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