Family Matters

My cartoons very seldom make it into the mainstream press, but this one appeared in the Los Angeles Times back in January, 2007. I drew it after then Vice President Dick Cheney bristled at questions about his daughter Mary's family -- they were then expecting their first child -- during an interview on CNN by Wolf Blitzer.

Blitzer asked the vice president about a statement from Focus on the Family about whether having a child outside of a married mother or father is best for the child.
Cheney said Blitzer was "out of line" even asking the question about Mary Cheney and said he fundamentally disagreed with Blitzer's perspective.

It wasn't the first time the Cheney's had treated Mary and her partner, Heather Poe, as if there was something to be embarrassed about. In the 2004 vice presidential debate, Democratic nominee John Edwards cynically tried to prod Dick Cheney into discussing how the Republicans' gay-baiting, homophobic tactics affected the Vice President's own family. Mr. Cheney would have none of it, and his wife, Lynn, came out swinging afterward (although, to be fair, it was moderator Gwen Ifill who brought the subject up in the first place).

(This cartoon alludes to another point in the debate when Dick Cheney denied ever having met Senator Edwards in the U.S. Senate, a claim contradicted by the public record.)

Tune in again tomorrow.