The World O' Crap Archive

Welcome to the Collected World O' Crap, a comprehensive library of posts from the original Salon Blog, and our successor site, world-o-crap.com (2006 to 2010).

Current posts can be found here.

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Lynne Cheney's 'Sisters' Just Good Friends

The Raw Story brings us the story: 
Lynne Cheney appeared on CNN’s The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer. She dismissed Virginia Democrat Jim Webb as being “full of baloney” but was uncooperative when Blitzer questioned her on her own book.
Here’s part of Raw Story’s transcript:
BLITZER: Here’s what the Democratic Party put out today, the Democratic Congressional — Senatorial Campaign Committee: “Lynne Cheney’s book featured brothels and attempted rape. In 1981, Vice President Dick Cheney’s wife, Lynne, wrote a book called “Sisters”, which featured a lesbian love affair, brothels and attempted rapes.”
CHENEY: No.
BLITZER: “In 1988, Lynn Cheney wrote about a Republican vice president who dies of a heart attack while having sex with his mistress.” Is that true?
CHENEY: Nothing explicit. And actually, that was full of lies.
It’s not — it’s just — it’s absolutely not a…
BLITZER: Did you write a book entitled “Sisters”?
CHENEY: I did write a book entitled “Sisters”.
BLITZER: It did have lesbian characters.
CHENEY: This — no, not necessarily. This description is a lie.
I’ll stand on that.
So, these characters from Sisters are not necessarily lesbians: 
The women who embraced in the wagon were Adam and Eve crossing a dark cathedral stage — no, Eve and Eve, loving one another as they would not be able to once they ate of the fruit and knew themselves as they truly were. She felt curiously moved, curiously envious of them. She had never to this moment thought Eden a particularly attractive paradise, based as it was on naiveté, but she saw that the women in the cart had a passionate, loving intimacy forever closed to her. How strong it made them. What comfort it gave.
See, just because Eve and Eve share a passionate, loving intimacy, they aren’t necessarily lesbian characters — they won’t find out their sexual orientation until John Kerry announces it in a presidential debate.

And this next passage is most likely just describing a slumber party which takes place in a bower:
Let us go away together, away from the anger and imperatives of men. We shall find ourselves a secluded bower where they dare not venture. There will be only the two of us, and we shall linger through long afternoons of sweet retirement. In the evenings, I shall read to you while you work your cross-stitch in the firelight. And then we shall go to bed, our bed, my dearest girl.
So, just as her characters aren’t necessarily lesbians, Lynne isn’t necessarily full of crap (or baloney). 
BLITZER: There’s nothing in there about rape and brothels?
CHENEY: Well, Wolf, could we talk about a children’s book for a minute?
A children’s book about rape and brothels??? Lynne, I am shocked, SHOCKED that you would want to talk about such things on public TV, especially after you mentioned that your grandchildren might be tuning in!
BLITZER: I just wanted to — I just wanted to clarify what’s in the news today, given — this is…
CHENEY: That’s lies and distortion. That’s what it is.
BLITZER: This is an opportunity for you to explain on these sensitive issues.
CHENEY: Wolf, I have nothing to explain. Jim Webb has a lot to explain.
BLITZER: Well, he says he’s only — as a serious writer, novelist, a fiction writer, he was doing basically what you were doing.
CHENEY: Jim Webb is full of baloney.
Yeah, if anybody thinks that Lynne Cheney, author of Sisters, The Republican VP Who Died While Cheating On His Wife: A Cautionary Tale, and A Republican Child’s Book of Wholesome, Uplifting, White American History is a serious writer, they are full of baloney.  Thanks for making that point clear, Lynne.

P.S.  I’m really hoping that Mrs. Tarquin Biscuitbarrel will weigh in on this story, because she’s America’s preeminent Lynne Cheney sleazy novel scholar.  She is also an expert on the smutty novels written by such other prominent conservatives as Scooter Libby and Bill O’Reilly, and has written scholarly Amazon book reviews about Laura Bush porn.

20 Responses to “Lynne Cheney’s ‘Sisters’ Just Good Friends”

Here I was all set to talk about Lynne’s little prevarications to Wolf for my Saturday post at The American Street and you beat me to it, s.z. I keep forgetting that with your menagerie you never sleep. My elderly cocker spaniel, on the other hand, is a sleep machine which, it seems, keeps me from the top of my game. Fortunately we still have Michael Steele to kick around this morning.
I’m also still awake in an effort to stave off feline desecrations of a carpet, which seems to happen whenever she feels I’m ignoring her. Also, my partner snores, so I tend to sleep days anyway. Which is obviously the deal here. I mean, it’s our bed, I certainly share it with my partner and all, but it’s more like a timeshare than a brothel. That’s all Lynne meant. They had to share beds because, you know, it was the olden days, and as Jonah Goldberg recently explained, even the rich couldn’t get iPods, so they probably didn’t have enough beds to go around either. Makes me glad I live now!
Either that or they were just Lesbian Until Homesteading, which is perfectly acceptable, and in no way means that you are, of course, some kind of butch bulldyke. Plus one of them probably just seduced the other, you know how those wicked suffranazis were, and thus completely *ruined* her for bears. Oh, wait, different novel.
Man, republicans have creepy sexual issues…
If Jim Webb is full of baloney…
Sorry, had to go with the easy joke. Carry on.

All this ‘sisters’ talk reminds me that it’ll soon be time to pop White Christmas into the DVD player. Can’t wait for Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen to do their song Sisters, about, yes, sisters, who do everything together and who warn “Lord help the mister who gets between me and my sister”. Then, right after that, we get Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye doing their rendition of that same song.
I think it was T.S. Eliot who said something to the effect of “trust the tale, not the teller” when asked whether one should trust/ask authors as to the meaning of the work ( or maybe they were asking what he was going on about in “The Wasteland”)
Lynn reminds me of one of my freshmen. I say something to the effect that the words in front of them seem to suggest that, say, Yeat’s “Second Coming” is not really about sex (well, at least they read the title). They tell me “well, it means whatever I want it to me, and it’s my interpretation.” And then I bore the shit out of them explaining how our constructs of interpretation come from the biblical method of exegesis blah blah blah and they are confusing that with Romantic constructions of blah blah blah ( I love making shit up that they couldn’t give a fuck about but that they have to listen to so that I tell finally tell them that they can revise the paper for a higher grade).
Well, I’m a gut grader, but Lynn, even I would not give you over a D. I’m sorry,the assignment was a basic plot summary of The Sisters. You failed to do that. You fail to take into account basic setting ( brothels); essential plot components ( attempted rape). You even are confused about the main characters. Writing about another book, simply is not acceptable.
I happened to flip channels from the Ickfest that was BillO on Okra and caught the Wolfie’s attempt to pin down Lynne–hilarious! My, my she was about to go all “Bill Clinton” on Wolfie, there! Not to mention the sucking up Wolf did over her current book and in closing the interview. Then they went to a screen shot of the Amazon page of the “not necessarily” ready for porn-time and I couldn’t help but notice the price:
http://tinyurl.com/y4r3wt

What a fine example of the news we get whether we deserve it or not. Some pseudo-salaciousness in the Virginia Senate campaign is answered with “Lynne Cheney did it too.” It was the perfect opportunity to exercise what used to be called “news judgment” and leave a non-story alone, or at least let ‘em worry about it in Virginia. Instead Blitzer invites Cheney on.
Which might be considered a double-edged sword, but then Wolfie either is only marginally aware of what was in the book–rather famously made public more than two years ago–or he does a very good impression of a man with transient global amnesia. He quotes the Dem press release at her! As a result Cheney has the opportunity to claim she’s being attacked, and to wriggle as far as she feels she can, considering the whole thing’s long since made public, knowing Wolf isn’t prepared to call her on it directly. How many researchers do we imagine are on the Situation Room staff? And why are they there?
How many researchers do we imagine are on the Situation Room staff? And why are they there?
My money’s on “staying abreast of hair salon technology”.
In case anyone’s in the mood to read some real bad writin’, a kind soul at white house.org posted a pdf of the entire book.
http://www.whitehouse.org/administration/lynne-cheney-sisters-full.pdf
Enjoy the hypocrisy!
Man, she’s a bad writer.
Diane: Remember, it’s only hypocarsy when a liberal\democrat does it.
Whereas the book was ‘only’ going for 299.95 on Friday, today it’s up to 695.95 on Amazon.
Look, no matter how bad Cheney OR Webb’s books were, neither holds a candle to Lewis “Bears Raping Thirteen Year Olds” Libby…
Katrina, the paperback is up to $1,500 this morning. But you can read it for free!

The manly Mr. Biscuitbarrel called out to me last night that a couple we know had sent a link to WO’C mentioning my name. Now that Lynne Cheney’s “Sisters” has achieved its silver anniversary year, I’m very grateful that my honeyboy over at http://www.whitehouse.org has posted a .pdf for free downloading. I sent him an attachment e-copy of “Sisters” after LiveJournal took down my blog in late November 2004, only a week or so after I’d typed in the last chapter of the book.

Thanks to another tip today, I learned of another site, http://www.thesmokingnug.com, which also is offering a .pdf download of “Sisters.” (I thought that the website’s title was a typo, but not so!)

There are several plot twists of “Sisters” that I find at least as interesting, in fact, as the Sapphic characters that people keep giggling about. For one, the novel’s beautiful heroine, Sophie Dymond, has long enjoyed a satisfying heterosexual sex life, complete with extramarital lovers, with little fear of unplanned pregnancy. After Sophie runs away from her convent school and joins a traveling circus–okay, I didn’t write this book, folks, I only re-typed it–Sophie’s first boss comments on her beauty. Then, rather than making a pass at her, Ms. Boss thoughtfully gives her a “lacquered box” chock-full of “preventive powders,” silk sponges, and sheaths. “There are all these things, you know,” her boss comments languidly.

Sophie’s love life also provides her with a publishing empire, after her aging husband conveniently dies and leaves her sole heiress.

When Sophie comes West to her native Wyoming to investigate her sister’s mysterious death by falling, she learns that while yes, the native American Deer Woman is her maternal grandmother, there’s some doubt as to her parentage. Deer Woman spent the winter before Sophie’s birth snowed in at winter camp for months, alone with TWO men.

There’s also Lynne Cheney’s unblinking assertion that homesteaders are trash, and that only major landowners are proper stewards of the land. (No surprises here.) The homes are large and luxurious, there are servants a-plenty, and Sophie even has a personal maid named, ncongruously, “Connie.” (I kept expecting characters named Midge and Skipper to show up next.)

When Lynne told Wolf Blitzer that it was “a lie” that “Sisters” had lesbian characters, I can’t imagine what Lynne imagined that two such markedly affectionate women as Sophie’s sister and her teacher/friend did together in “our bed… dearest girl.”

When the eyes of the women characters in “Sisters” begin to sparkle, and their breasts to heave, they typically are talking about temperance and sexual abstinence. Sophie/Lynne doesn’t understand the form these women’s fervor takes. Though the character of the vice-president conveniently dies in Lynne’s first novel, perhaps back in 1981, when her second was published, she still secretly hoped that her buoy-shaped husband would be quickly disposed of.

After all, that’s what happens to Sophie. A few plot twists and turns later, Sophie ends up with her dashing, wealthy Scottish brother-in-law. His wife may have been Sophie’s sister, but in Cheney’s eyes she was too somber, too Sapphic, and too uncontrollably fertile to be worthy of this prairie stud muffin.

No wonder Lynne has turned her attentions to writing ultra-patriot children’s books. She’s learned that wishing, as a writer, can’t make things so.
Left by Mrs. Tarquin Biscuitbarrel on October 30th, 2006
 
I suggest you enter the Lynne market right before Christmas with a March put option on 1000 books at $700 a crack (no pun intended) and let ‘er ride until just after Valentine’s Day. You’ll make a fortune.
After seeing Lynne’s conversation with Wolf, I finally realized why Dick has to get out of the house so much. Despite being married to Lynne, Dick is a pretty fun, if evil, guy:
http://joecrubaugh.com/blog/2006/10/23/a-day-with-dick-cheney/

Maybe one of the “Eves” was a she-male, which would make her partially a man and therefore probably OK under Republican guidelines for writing smut. I mean as long as homosexuality isn’t overtly portrayed. Of course, Republicans also like man-on-dog sex.
Is lynn taking lessons from Barbara Shrub?
It is ruumorred that in the Cheney household the children were sent to their rooms for telling the truth.
Scooter Libby has privately told his friends that he actually didn’t know he was lying.
Dick Cheney and Mike Tyson. Dude, you best cover your ears.
Exorcise your right. Vote!!!
Republican smut is morally upstanding, while Democratic smut threatens the Republic. But how did this women head up anything when her writing is so terrible? She should be thankful they pressured the publisher not to reissue it. What an embarrassment! What’s next, Santorum writing gay porn?

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