Thursday, October 07, 2004

Kaus Outs Himself As An Idiot

I haven't written much on midget Mickey Kaus recently, mainly because his comments have been divided evenly between uninteresting and unreadable, but his hackery is shining through again. Here he accuses John Edwards of stealth gay-bashing:

Alert reader S.H. clues me in on the obvious purpose of Edwards' creepy 'congratulations on your gay daughter' ploy: it was "a very thinly disguised way of letting Reagan Democrats (and other conservative-leaning members of the electorate) know that Cheney has a lesbian daughter." In other words, a cynical, premeditated appeal to prejudice. You can say it's an appeal to prejudice that's justly deserved, because it turns the Republicans' bigotry against them. But that assumes opposition to gay marriage is now the same thing as general prejudice against gays. Edwards was playing to the latter, uglier sentiment. It's still creepy. ... Just his cold confidence that he could pull the trick off without seeming evil (indeed, while pretending to be friendly) is creepy. ...

Yes, Edwards appeal was so obvious that someone had to point it out to Kaus.

The only problem with argument is that it's wrong. Gwen Ifill raised the issue in her question to Cheney, saying "you used your family's experience as a context for your remarks." And Cheney raised the issue in the remarks Ifill cited.

How exactly does Kaus, or his idiot e-mailer, know what Edwards was thinking? It's an old Kaus trick, bogus mindreading to attribute bad faith to a Democrat.

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