On gay-marriage feud, Liz Cheney might want to heed Joe Stalin

Guess it will be some Thanksgiving at the Cheney household next week; one thing’s for sure — there’ll be more than one turkey at the table.

In their latest bid to remake “Family Feud� as a reality TV show, older daughter Liz Cheney — who’s running for Senate in Wyoming — happily threw her lesbian sister and her sister’s wife under the campaign bus over the weekend. Appearing on “Fox News Sunday,� Liz Cheney touched the third rail of Cheney family politics by restating her firm opposition to same-sex marriage. Then, proving she has her daddy’s gift for talking out of both sides of one’s mouth, she added: “I love Mary very much. I love her family very much. This is just an issue in which we disagree.�

To which Mary, proving that she also got something from daddy — his famous temper — took to Facebook with this retort: “Liz — this isn’t just an issue on which we disagree you’re just wrong — and on the wrong side of history.�

Wow, can’t you just hear mom Lynne saying “Now, girls,� or perhaps Dick resurrecting one of his favorite rejoinders: “Go ….. yourself!�? (Unclear, of course, is exactly which one he would say that to).

And as all of us with siblings and partners and husbands and wives know, it just wouldn’t be a holiday feud without the mouthy sister-in-law jumping in; Mary Cheney’s wife, Heather Poe, took her shot: “I was watching my sister-in-law on Fox News Sunday (yes Liz, in fifteen states and the District of Columbia you are my sister-in-law) and was very disappointed to hear her say ‘I do believe in the traditional definition of marriage. Liz has been a guest in our home, has spent time and shared holidays with our children, and when Mary and I got married in 2012 — she didn’t hesitate to tell us how happy she was for us.

“To have her now say she doesn’t support our right to marry is offensive to say the least. I can’t help but wonder how Liz would feel if as she moved from state to state, she discovered that her family was protected in one but not the other. I always thought freedom meant freedom for EVERYONE.�

Oh, yes, and could you pass the cranberry, please? Oh no, no more bread for me ... What? No, I did not tell you to stuff it, I said I’m stuffed!

Now, no one ever said politics is anything but a nasty business. Certainly the Cheneys, of all people, understand that. But perhaps they might gain some insight into family dynamics by reading this Op-Ed in Sunday’s Times, “Would you break the law for your family?,� by Robert M. Sapolsky, a professor of neuroscience at Stanford University.

In it, he tells the charming tale of a young boy in the Stalinist-era Soviet Union who ratted out his own father as a black-marketeer; the father was executed. The boy, though, was then killed by irate relatives — only to be cast as hero of the state by Stalin’s propaganda machine. Statues were erected; a movie was made, even an opera.

But what did old Joe Stalin himself think of the boy, when told of his deed? “What a little pig to have done such a thing to his own family.�

Think about it, Liz.

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