Mary Heartless, Mary Heartless

I was doing a bit of web research on the apparent failure of Mary Cheney to successfully parade her status as 'token GOP lesbian daughter' and found the telling observation at PageOneQ:

"Purchasers of Cheney's book, according to Amazon..., also purchased the books by authors recognized by many on the gay community as non-supportive of lesbian and gay equal rights. Other books purchased by buyers of Cheney's book include Godless: Church of Liberalism by Ann Coulter and Can She Be stopped: Hillary Clinton will be the next President of the United States unless... by John Podhoretz.

"In another section of the same page, Amazon offers a discount for buyer's of Cheney's book. For $35.52 customers may purchase Cheney's and Coulter's books as a pair, a discount of almost 40%"

That book, of course, is "Now, It's My Turn," a memoir which reportedly netted Cheney a 1 million dollar advance from Simon & Schuster. By the way, that price for the pair has just dipped down to $32.52.

Cheney and Coulter...strange bedfellows? Not really. Actually, Coulter is far more honest about who she is.

The PageOneQ article notes, "Sales numbers from Neilsen Bookscan, as reported by the Advocate, indicate that during the week of June 3, the books sold 574 nationwide. This number, the Advocate reported, is 77% less sales than the number sold during the book's first week on the shelves, 2,445."

So why didn't the public buy a book from the GOP poster girl for self-interest?

The Mary Cheney who thought it was horrendous to be outted by John Edwards (as if she never served as a gay liaison flak for a beleaguered Coors Brewing Company), doesn't seem to have minded George W. Bush pronouncing her bond with her partner to be a threat to our nation's moral fibre.

The Mary Cheney who now seeks to capitalize on who she chooses to love (thank goodness for big advances from S&S), doesn't seem to mind that her father is campaigning for an outright homophobe, Minnesota's Michele Bachmann.

I really enjoyed Gene Stone's take on the hypocrisy. Stone writes, "the openly gay Ms. Cheney seems to support gay rights only to the extent she can get money from it. Otherwise, she supports those who oppose it."

As Stone also notes, in discussing the relative failure of the book, "When an author's only interest seems to be herself, it doesn't really matter what her background is, conservative, liberal, middle of the road, gay, or straight. No one other than the author cares."

Touché.