Tue, Jan 23 2007

What was Liz Cheney really saying?

I'm not sure why she chose this time to write about Senator Hillary Clinton, but Liz Cheney did just that in an Op-Ed piece. (You may need to register in order to read it.)

It seems to me that most of the resulting backlash is more about her writing skills and writing style than her choice of topic. Several blog writers have made remarks about her writing.

To be fair, let's say that a lot of people were probably already highly prejudiced against anything Ms. Cheney would write. There was a lot of anger unleashed on her in the comments accompanying her Op-Ed piece. Several people reminded her that she could certainly enlist in the military at any time, but that neither she nor her father have been in active service. Someone even brought up the old notion that Ms. Cheney's birth may have been at least part of the reason for her father's own military deferments during the Vietnam conflict.

The problem for me is that her writing does come across as a student piece, written hurriedly in the nyah-nyah style of a junior high girl who is jealous of a classmate and takes a few verbal swings at said classmate with feet wide apart and hands on hips, full of so much emotion that she doesn't really take time to choose her facts carefully or to brace her stance with a line of thought that flows to a logical conclusion. It could have been a really powerful piece of writing. Instead, it comes across as pitiful venting from a hurt little girl who aims for acceptance but sabotages herself by evoking negative attention. My big question is: Didn't she know this is exactly what the reaction would be?

posted at: 12:01 | category: /Politics | link to this entry