Pirates and Emperors — a Schoolhouse Rock-ish video about U.S. support of dictatorships in the 1980s.

So, there’s this artificial tempest going on because Kerry referred to Mary Cheney as a lesbian during the third presidential debate.

If you haven’t been following, some people (particularly Lynne and Dick Cheney) claim that it was unconscionable for Kerry to bring up Mary Cheney’s homosexuality during the debate, after moderator Bob Schieffer asked if the candidates believe homosexuality is a choice.

KERRY: We’re all God’s children, Bob. And I think if you were to talk to Dick Cheney’s daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she’s being who she was, she’s being who she was born as.

I think if you talk to anybody, it’s not choice. I’ve met people who struggled with this for years, people who were in a marriage because they were living a sort of convention, and they struggled with it…

Lynne Cheney called Kerry “not a good man” and said mentioning Mary was a “cheap and tawdry political trick.” Dick Cheney described himself as “a pretty angry father.” The New York Post (big surprise) has it as today’s cover story under the headline “NO SHAME.”

Oh, I see. So it’s okay for you to mention your own gay daughter, but nobody else can?

Cheney’s remarks came in response to a question from a member of the audience at an Aug. 24 town hall meeting in Davenport, Iowa.

The audience member asked, “I would like to know, sir, from your heart — I don’t want to know what your advisers say, or even what your top adviser thinks — but I need to know what do you think about homosexual marriages?”

With his wife Lynne Cheney sitting next to him, Cheney said, “Lynne and I have a gay daughter, so it’s an issue that our family is very familiar with.”

No, it can’t be that it’s okay only if it’s your own daughter, because the Cheneys didn’t express public outrage when Republican Senate candidate Alan Keyes referred to Mary recently as a “selfish hedonist.”

This is utter bullshit. Karl Rove must be thrilled at this distraction from Bush’s awful presidency.

As for the merits themselves of this trumped-up issue, Dave Cullen in Salon.com gets it right:

Let’s get one thing straight. It is not an insult to call a proudly public lesbian a lesbian. It’s an insult to gasp when someone calls her a lesbian. That’s how all the gays I have spoken to the past 24 hours perceived the press response. You’re embarrassed for us. And it’s infuriating.

So does Andrew Sullivan:

[I]t’s no different than, say, if a candidate were to mention another candidate’s son in the Marines. Or if, in a debate on immigration, a pro-immigrant candidate mentioned Kerry’s immigrant wife. You have to regard homosexuality as immoral or wrong or shameful to even get to the beginning of the case against Kerry. That’s why it’s a Rorschach test. Secondly, Mary Cheney isn’t private. She ran gay outreach for Coors, for pete’s sake. She appears in public with her partner. Her family acknowledges this. She’s running her dad’s campaign! Whatever else this has to do with – and essentially, it has to do whether you approve of homosexuality or not – privacy is irrelevant.

Mike has some comments as well.

Let’s see: more than 1,000 American soldiers have died in an unnecessary and horribly-executed war. Osama bin Laden is still at large. Bush has blown the deficit through the roof, gutted environmental protections, underfunded his own education program, and lied about the cost of his prescription drug program. No wonder the Republicans want to distract us.

Now can we please get back to how Bush is ruining the country?

“Will ‘The West Wing’ go Republican?”

“We were a year and a half into the administration when we started the show,” Wells said of the NBC drama entering its sixth season. “We have term limits in this country and so, on our electoral schedule, Bartlet’s second term would end a year from this coming January.”

What the heck is John Wells talking about? We were less than a year into the administration when the show began, and the second term would end two years from this coming January. “The Midterms,” in which the midterm congressional elections took place, aired in the fall of 2000, and more importantly, Bartlett won re-election in the fall of 2002 and had his second inaugural in January 2003.

And here’s a “West Wing” timeline if John Wells needs any help.

I hate, hate, hate it when TV programs do this sort of thing. Someone better correct him, fast.