Maya's Lament

I'm always wary of dragging politicians' relatives, especially their kids, into the limelight.

What would be non-news if it was anyone else's kid can be big news when there's a famous parent, and I've always felt that was unfair.

A couple of college girls get cited for underage drinking? Would that merit a sentence in any metropolitan daily in America? Yet if they're the Bush twins, it becomes global news.

But what about when the relative thrusts herself into the white-hot media glare? Then the calculation is reversed: journalists aren't exploiting the person, she is trying to use the fame (or notoriety) of her name to draw attention to herself or her cause.

We saw that when Candace Gingrich became a very public advocate for gay rights while her brother was House speaker. In fact, she wrote a piece for The Washington Post that was headlined: "Gay, Proud . . . and Gingrich; Many Americans Accept Me as a Lesbian. Why Can't My Brother?"

Mary Cheney has been public about her sexuality--she was a liaison to the gay community for her father's vice-presidential campaign, and for Coors before that--but if she's ever given an interview about being a lesbian, I've missed it. When John Kerry mentioned her by name in the last presidential debate--despite the fact that Dick and Lynne Cheney have spoken publicly about having a gay daughter--both parents ripped him. Mary Cheney preferred to remain behind the scenes.

Now comes the case of Maya Keyes. Her father, Alan Keyes, ran for president and, more recently, for the Senate from Illinois (despite having been living in Maryland), getting crushed by Barack Obama. Keyes is not just an outspoken conservative but one who denounces the so-called gay 'lifestyle' (he criticized Mary Cheney last year as a hedonist).

So when word began bouncing around the Net in recent months that Keyes had a lesbian daughter, there was naturally plenty of interest. The Illinois press stayed away from it, and I kept my distance in this column as well, simply because I didn't know whether it was true.

But it turns out that Ms. Keyes has plenty to say, and she started a blog.

Daily Kos picked up the story, and explains why in this post:

Neither I, nor other blogs, have 'outed' Maya. She's out. She brags about wearing her rainbow bracelet on the campaign trail. Her father must either be blind or clueless not to know his daughter's sexual preferences. Pointing out that the adult daughter of a politician, who is campaigning with that politician is gay isn't a slur.

"So why is Keyes so quick to attack the children of others? Why is he so virulently anti-homosexual? Why does it seem that every high-profile anti-gay figure has a gay child?

"From reading her blog, it seems like Maya is out and proud. Good for her. The question is, what kind of person is her father, to so hatefully oppose something that's so innately part of Maya?"

Maya Keyes says on her blog that her father has kicked her out of his apartment:

"God works in really screwed up ways sometimes - there are times in life when He doesn't just nudge you gently in the direction He wants you to go, he sorta - takes a 2x4 and whacks you over the head a few times - last month felt a lot like that for me. These past few weeks two things happened and it became absolutely clear to me why I had to speak here today. To begin with, I was having issues at home - issues that we'd been having for quite a while, but things just came to a head - liberal queer + conservative Republican just doesn't mesh too well. So that was making life a little turbulent. . . .

"Sure, I did grow up in a really conservative household; and, okay, it was a slightly more high-profile household than most people's - but this isn't a speech about me. This is about the thousands of kids across the country growing up in houses where they're raised hearing constantly how they are somehow wrong, unnatural, immoral just because of who they are - kids who are rejected by those who should love them most - and we have to figure out what we can do to make sure that during those times when it feels like everything in the world is rejecting them, they know there are resources out there they can turn to; there are people out there who will say to them, I care."

Washington Post columnist Marc Fisher interviewed Keyes, who said she wants to talk about "what it was like for me growing up as a liberal queer in a very conservative household. I've known so many other people in a position like mine, where their families really don't want much to do with them. Maybe I can help by talking about it."

What about her father's comment last year that "if my daughter were a lesbian, I'd look at her and say, 'That is a relationship that is based on selfish hedonism.' I would also tell my daughter that it's a sin and she needs to pray to the Lord God to help her deal with that sin."

Maya's reaction: "It was kind of strange that he said it like a hypothetical. It was really kind of unpleasant."

Why does this sort of thing draw attention when conservatives are involved? Because if they oppose gay rights, and one of their children is gay, the matter, like it or not, becomes personal, not just a matter of abstract political rhetoric.

The Jeff Gannon story isn't quite over, and while I'm not providing explicit links--they're not hard to find--here's the top of my report on the latest chapter:

The Jeff Gannon story is still bouncing around the Internet, and now there are pictures.

The kind you shouldn't open up in the office.

The X-rated twist has made for a lot of clandestine clicking in a town where Deep Throat conjures up images not of a porn star but of a man in a parking garage. But it has also deepened the debate over blogging and the tactics used to drive a conservative reporter from his job as White House correspondent for two Web sites owned by a Republican activist.

In most Beltway melodramas, the resignation ends the story. The problem for Gannon, whose real name is James Dale Guckert, is that he told The Washington Post and CNN's Wolf Blitzer last week that he never launched the Web sites whose provocative names he had registered, such as hotmilitarystud.com. But a Web designer in California said yesterday that he had designed a gay escort site for Gannon and had posted naked pictures of Gannon at the client's request.

The day's other big media story is the not-unexpected ruling against Judith Miller and Matt Cooper in the Valerie Plame leak investigation. Let's dip into a few reports, starting with the Los Angeles Times:

"Each reporter faces up to 18 months in jail, in a case that has come to symbolize a new era of aggressive tactics by prosecutors toward the news media, testing the limits of government power to force journalists to reveal their sources even, in the case of Miller, for a story she never wrote."

The New York Times:

"The judges disagreed about whether evolving legal standards reflected in lower-court decisions and state statutes might provide a separate, nonconstitutional basis for protection to reporters in some circumstances, under a so-called common law privilege. That dispute was, however, of no immediate help to Ms. Miller and Mr. Cooper, as all three judges agreed that the special prosecutor in the case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, had overcome whatever protection was available."

Daily Kos provides a less sympathetic view:

"Miller and Cooper should just testify, already. They were played by a vindictive, treasonous administration who would rather endanger covert anti-terrorist intelligence operations than brook any dissent. That Miller and Cooper insist on enabling those who lied to them about Plame and Wilson is ridiculous.

"They are not protecting a whistleblower, or a broader high-minded appeal to the truth. They are protecting a treasonous liar who used them for political vengeance."

But Cooper, for one, was reporting a post-Novak story that made an issue of the leaks against an administration critic.

Washington Monthly's Amy Sullivan jumps on the story of the former Bush aide who feels abandoned on the faith-based effort:

"This terrific piece by David Kuo, former deputy director of the White House's faith-based office, is worth five minutes of your time. It's not necessarily new--we said much the same thing last October in a piece outlining how Bush's faith-based policies have amounted to nothing not despite the White House's best efforts but precisely because of White House indifference. What's really striking is to see a former insider leveling the same charges.

"Kuo lays some blame at the feet of Democrats, as well. While I still maintain they're right to insist that those who receive state money abide by the simple--and reasonable--rule that they not discriminate when they hire people to use that money, that objection very quickly came to define the entirety of the Democratic position on faith-based initiatives. And, as I pointed out in an earlier article and Kuo says here, that not only put Democrats on the losing side of the debate, but it also distracted them from what should have been their real mission: holding Bush accountable for his goals and claims with the faith-based initiative. As Kuo writes, 'Had these liberal groups or an alliance of charities held the White House accountable for how little was being done--especially compared to what was promised--there is no telling what might have happened.'

"One quibble: Before he really gives the White House a good whack, Kuo provides the requisite 'of course, I have the utmost respect for the president, blahedy-blah' statement, noting that the president is a sincerely compassionate man and that colleagues in the White House were kind to him when he experienced a health crisis. That's good to hear--although stories like that often make me wonder if the bar for good behavior isn't set just a bit low ('Bob Novak doesn't eat small children . . . he must be a good guy'). But I guess this is where liberals and conservatives diverge. I'd much rather see the country run by a jerk of a guy who forgets his secretary's birthday and can't be bothered to remember staff member's names (much less give them nicknames) but whose policies make life better for MILLIONS OF PEOPLE than a president who gets along well with his staff and friends but whose policies hurt others."

The Eason Jordan resignation is still reverberating across the Web, and NYU blogger Jay Rosenweighs in:

"I don't think he should have resigned. I don't know why he did. Neither the public overlooking this sad event, nor the participants in it know why Eason Jordan quit. No reasons have been given, beyond saving CNN the trouble of a controversy.

"That's not a reason. If CNN is a real news network, why shouldn't it have the trouble of a controversy now and then? I think anyone interested in serious journalism would agree that what are called news values come out during times when the network is criticized, called to defend itself, attacked by political interests, or otherwise under pressure. No executive can succeed in news who is not nimble in public controversy. Eason Jordan knows that. And yet:

"I have decided to resign in an effort to prevent CNN from being unfairly tarnished by the controversy over conflicting accounts of my recent remarks regarding the alarming number of journalists killed in Iraq.

"'Prevent CNN from being unfairly tarnished...' I'm sorry. The phrase is meaningless to me. The act stands unexplained."

Jordan is making news in other ways, as Lloyd Grove reports in the New York Daily News:

"Former CNN exec Eason Jordan - who abruptly resigned amid a storm of controversy over his claim that U.S. soldiers had allegedly targeted journalists in Iraq - has a new bombshell.

"A blond one.

"Word is that Jordan is dating Sharon Stone.

"I'm told that the 46-year-old movie siren hooked up with the 44-year-old news executive during the World Economic Conference in Davos, Switzerland.

"The night after Jordan made his career-damaging remarks during a Jan. 27 panel discussion (he has since backed off, telling CNN staffers he does not believe troops acted with "ill intent"), the two were seated next to each other at an intimate, star-studded dinner at the posh Hotel Derby. The 50-guest dinner was graced by Angelina Jolie and hosted by CNN founder Ted Turner, with Columbia University Economics Professor Jeffrey Sachs.

"Apparently sparks flew between Jordan and Stone, because the following week, I'm told, a lovestruck Jordan was excitedly referring to the actress as 'my girlfriend.'"

If so, Sharon must like journalists, since she was previously married to San Francisco Chronicle Editor Phil Bronstein.

George Pataki, whose poll numbers are sagging in New York, seems to have lost the backing of many conservatives, as John Miller makes clear in National Review

"Somewhere along the way, however, Pataki lost his enthusiasm for this bold project [of cutting taxes]. Ten years ago, he had a chance to become one of America's great governors. But starting in the late 1990s, he devoted much of his energy to raising taxes and fees to keep up with state spending, arranging billion-dollar backroom deals with union bosses, and worrying about what kind of toilet-bowl cleaners swirl into the potties of Albany.

"Today, he presides over a state that just finished dead last in a survey of economic freedom conducted by Forbes magazine and the Pacific Research Institute. His tenure as the Empire State's chief executive began with incredible promise -- but its legacy almost certainly will be one of squandered opportunity, shrunken ambition, and conservative disappointment."