BrainStream: More On the Keyes Family

Today's a new day and thus warrants a new post to cover what's going on with regard to the story of Alan Keyes and his daughter Maya. Last we heard, Keyes was to address the issue at a press conference last night. A gossip article in the NY Daily News reported the issue and had a Keyes spokesperson state that he would answer questions about the story that night as well.

What's most interesting and probably most thorough is an Illinois Leader article about the situation. The tone of the article is....interesting. If you recall, I wondered whether the Republican party would tackle the issue or keep quiet about it since Keyes is their candidate. However it is by far the most thorough article thus far and sounds as if they want answers from the candidate. The article mentions several things of note:

• That it was anticipated that Keyes would break the news last night at his Town Hall Meeting.


• That the rumor had been floating around all weekend on "gay" blogs and made it to Rich Miller's CapitolFax yesterday morning.


• Alas, that Maya postponed attending Brown this year to help with her father's campaign.


• And finally, that Keyes completely dodged the issue by not answering questions as he left the event with his daughter in his car's back seat.

I think the most disappointing revelation is that his daughter took a year off from Brown to work on her father's campaign. The fact that she didn't appear to be working with the campaign is what kept people from using her apparent lesbianism as a political issue. However I recall one of her entries stating that she was taking the year off from Brown but she was afraid that her parents would still see her as a lesbian at the end of the year and not pay for her to go back. In essence, this may mean she didn't really have a choice.

The fact that the Keyes campaign said the candidate would address questions about the issue at last night's town hall meeting only to have him brush them off with no indication of when he would discuss the situation is a bit frustrating. But perhaps they needed just a bit more time to strategize.

Finally, it looks like Maya has restored a bit more of her blog after the sudden paranoid "restriction" of all posts and then the strange appearance of a strongly anti-abortion message...which appears to be gone.All the appears now is some creative writing she's done including poetry and fiction - at least on the front page. I have yet to dig deeper.

I'm sure we'll hear from the Keyes campaign sometime today.

Update: 12:57pm ET - UPI has ran with the story and it's appearing in the Washington Times. Strange - they cheaped out on the info, however. It just mentions Politics1.com - who did a simple blurb linking to the actual sites that did all the work.

Update: 11:28am ET - 365gay.com, the site that first quoted Keyes calling Mary Cheney a "selfish hedonist" for her lifestyle has reported on the situation - it looks like the report is mostly culled from the Illinois Leader aricle.

[BrainStream]
(Permanent link to this entry)

BrainStream: Keyes: Pictures, Proof, Press and Pain?

A picture is worth a thousand words and one of the blogs covering this story has captured that. Unfortunately, I can't remember where I first saw the pictures - or I'd give attribution. Keyes himself has photos of him and his daughter Maya walking alongside each other in a parade in Naperville, Il. There are a few things to note -

• The earrings.


• The various rainbow paraphanalia.


• The marks on her arms.

These items are specifically called out due to observations I have made:

I say to notice the earrings because in all the pictures that show up that allegedly have Maya with her girlfriend Bria - she is wearing those earrings. (Including the one where they are kissing.) Thanks to LeeRoxxor pointing that out in comments at Chillinois.

As far as rainbows go,she has rings, wristbands, a purse and even her Yahoo Profile that she posts to her father's YahooGroups list for his reelection references her hobbies including "Rainbowing up the world."

Finally, the latter observation is quite personally and I daresay out of line. But I noticed it and I'd like to share it. Google currently has a cache from Maya's alleged blog dated March 22, 2004 that includes a meme survey and a post that caught my eye.

First, the survey:

TO PLAY I NEVER: PUT AN (x) IN FRONT OF THE THINGS THAT YOU HAVE
NEVER DONE BEFORE AND A (_) ON THE THINGS THAT YOU HAVE DONE AT 
LEAST ONCE. ADD AN "I NEVER" OF YOUR OWN.

(x) I NEVER HAVE BEEN DRUNK
(x) I NEVER HAVE SMOKED POT
(x) I NEVER HAVE TAKEN ILLEGAL DRUGS
(_) I NEVER HAVE KISSED A MEMBER OF THE OPPOSITE SEX
(_) I NEVER HAVE KISSED A MEMBER OF THE SAME SEX
(x) I NEVER CRASHED A FRIEND'S CAR
(x) I NEVER HAVE BEEN TO JAPAN
(_) I NEVER RODE IN A TAXI
(x) I NEVER HAD ANAL SEX
(x) I NEVER HAD ORAL SEX
(_) I NEVER HAVE BEEN IN LOVE
(x) I NEVER HAD SEX
(x) I NEVER HAVE HAD SEX IN PUBLIC
(x) I NEVER HAVE BEEN DUMPED
(_) I NEVER SHOPLIFTED
(x) I NEVER HAVE BEEN FIRED
(_) I NEVER HAVE BEEN IN A FIST FIGHT
(x) I NEVER HAD A THREESOME
(_) I NEVER SNUCK OUT OF MY PARENTS' 
(x) I NEVER HAVE BEEN TIED UP (SEXUALLY) 
(x) I NEVER HAVE BEEN CAUGHT MASTURBATING
(x) I NEVER PISSED ON MYSELF (ok, well, not since I've been out of diapers anyway!)
(x) I NEVER HAD SEX WITH A MEMBER OF THE SAME SEX
(x) I NEVER HAD SEX WITH A MEMBER OF THE OPPOSITE SEX
(x) I NEVER HAVE BEEN ARRESTED
(x) I NEVER MADE OUT WITH A STRANGER
(x) I NEVER STOLE SOMETHING FROM MY JOB 
(x) I NEVER CELEBRATED NEW YEARS IN TIME SQUARE
(x) I NEVER WENT ON A BLIND DATE 
(_) I NEVER LIED TO A FRIEND
(x) I NEVER CHEATED ON SOMEONE I WAS IN A RELATIONSHIP WITH
(_) I NEVER HAD A CRUSH ON A TEACHER
(_) I NEVER CELEBRATED MARDI GRAS IN NEW ORLEANS
(_) I NEVER HAVE BEEN TO EUROPE
(_) I NEVER SKIPPED SCHOOL
(x) I NEVER SLEPT WITH A CO-WORKER
(x) I NEVER HAVE BEEN FISTED AND/OR HAVE NEVER FISTED ANYONE
(x) I NEVER HAVE THROWN UP IN A BAR
(_) I NEVER HAVE PURPOSELY SET A PART OF MYSELF ON FIRE 
(_) I NEVER HAVE EATEN SUSHI
(x) I NEVER HAVE BEEN SNOWBOARDING
(x) I NEVER HAVE TAKEN A PILATES CLASS
(x) I NEVER HAVE JACKED OFF IN A PUBLIC PLACE
(_) I NEVER TRIED TO KILL SOMEONE ELSE
(_) I NEVER TRIED TO KILL MYSELF
(_) I NEVER VOTED IN ANY SORT OF ELECTION
(x) I NEVER HAD SEX WITH A RELATIVE
(x) I NEVER HAD SEX FOR MONEY
(x) I NEVER HAVE HAD AN ORGASM

The items "Have Purposely set a part of myself on fire" and "Have tried to kill myself" caught my eye, as well as the post following the list:

Tuesday, March 16, 2004

 this house apparently has no decent sharp knives
(they are not vegetarians i wonder how they manage to cut their meat)

and so i am reduced to safety pins and breaking open my razor to remove the blades

::currently playing: badly drawn boy, the shining::
 

Basically what I'm saying is that the marks on her arms in the various pictures, after reading these posts from what is allegedly her blog, made me think "self-mutilation" and self-harm. While many kids today experiment with self-mutilation, fire and such, (heck - I did when I was young) that combined with the suicide rate of gays and lesbians makes me hope that all of this attention won't push Maya over the edge should it prove to be true and that she continue to be dragged out in this building bit of media chaos.

I should note that these are my observations and while I'm posting them, I can't help but think I'm contributing to the situation. When I was with Attrition.org, we often mused that by having a mirror of Web site defacements, we were most likely encouraging script kiddies to do them -a viscious circle. However we also believed that our method of taking the mirrors and immediately notifying Webmasters of defaced sites did a service to those Webmasters and the computer security community at large.

So am I just being a media whore? I'd like to think that my analysis of this story was both nonpartisan and nonbiased. But what if this was Obama's daughter?? Would I have the same interest in exposing her? Is my desire to monitor and record what I believe to be a sociological and media studies event false and misguided? Should I just remove these posts and leave Maya alone due to my guilt regarding the undue invasion of her privacy this is causing? I continue to be torn.

Either way, I continue to hope that Maya's friends and family are incredibly supportive as this story develops and that she comes out of it relatively unscathed...returning back to Brown next year.

Better yet, if her parents continue their refusals to assist her with her college payments than perhaps the very blogging community that brought her story to public light can be the same to work with large groups to create a fund that will pay for her to complete her Brown education.

Things to ponder.

[BrainStream]
(Permanent link to this entry)

BrainStream: Mother Nature Having a Bad Month

Just heard news of a M6.0 earthquake just outside Parksfield, CA with 34 aftershocks - 4 of them being 4,0 or greater, in the past hour.

That combined with the fact that there is enough increased activity around Mount Saint Helens to warrant an official "Notice of Volcanic Unrest" - alongside all of the hurricanes making landfall in the US - really make you wonder what's going on. All that's missing is some avalanches, extra flooding, increased earthquake activity in Yellowstone, and a horrible snow storm season for my neck of the woods and then it's really time to worry.

[BrainStream]
(Permanent link to this entry)

BrainStream: Keyes: No Denials

Newsradio 780 in Chicago has gotten some soundbites, (via Chillinois), of Alan Keyes saying he would address questions regarding his daughter's sexuality at an "appropriate venue" making no attempts to deny the situation. The Il GOP Chairwoman also commented, stating she believes the children of candidates should be left out of campaigns.

Based on this reaction, I am 96% sure the story is true - not it just remains to see how it's handled. I would agree with the GOP Party chair were it not for several things:

• The fact that Maya Keyes and Mary Cheney both actively campaign for their fathers and thus should be held to the same standard as campaign staff.


• Alan Keyes' comments regarding Dick Cheney and his lesbian daughter's relationship.


• Keyes' record of virulent anti-homosexuality.

If Maya wasn't working for the campaign but was in Rhode Island at school, then she should be left alone: completely. Some good points have been made at other sites - perhaps Keyes knew Maya was showing her support on the campaign by wearing so much rainbow accessories. Perhaps Maya subtly wanted people to find her site in hopes that the media would get back at her father for how he treated her. We may never know.

Time to sit back and see what happens.

[BrainStream]
(Permanent link to this entry)