You Must Be Very Proud of Your GAY DAUGHTER

Jon Stewart had it right: the Dems might as well have had a bullhorn when they uttered the phrase "gay daughter" in bringing up Mary Cheney during the debates (in connection with Campaign 2004's strangely anachronistic exchanges about gay marriage, which recall discussions of desegregation during the Eisenhower years).

Now the press, with Fox and its hounds in the lead, has decided the gaffe is a story, and has turned out scores of political meteorologists to cover this tempest in a teapot.

Sure, Kerry (and Edwards) went overboard harping on the Cheney family and the implicit hypocrisy of GOP fag-bashing. But when you think about it, they've been pretty discreet in general.

After all, they haven't said word one about Karl Rove's fondness for tranny hookers and watersports.

Or word that John Ashcroft likes to wear a diaper and pleasure himself while watching "The Ten Commandments."

Or even that, when in Crawford, George W. Bush himself has been known to "party" with a neighbor's rottweiler.

They haven't made a peep about Tom DeLay's fondness for being spanked by a naked man wearing a wig and calling himself "grandma."

Or Bill Frist's collection of "erotic fraternity photos."

Or about Ralph Reed's predilection for what are known, in the trade, as "bears."

The list goes on and on. And no, most of the sexual peculiarities chronicled above can't be formally documented. They might just be rumors.

But do you doubt, in your heart, that these moralistic creeps, who have no compunction about micromanaging the personal lives of all Americans, are sick puppies in private?

And God bless 'em, by the way. I've got my tweakage, too.

My point is this: Kerry's awkward (okay, icky) reference caused the Cheney family some short-lived discomfort. But should said discomfort be allowed, in the copious press coverage of this flap, to outweigh the fact that GOP policy on sexual difference seems to be "our privacy is sacrosanct, but yours is up for grabs"? That the policies they advocate are antithetical to everyone's freedom, but that GOP members and their families are exempt, like corporations from taxes?

That is, like, so gay.