Look, if you like waffles, and you tell someone in an interview that your private opinion is that you like waffles, wouldn’t you disapprove of an organization using the clip of you saying that you like waffles to push its own agenda?
This recently happened with Laura Bush, who, after expressing her belief that full legalization of gay marriage is inevitable, found herself included as a part of an advertisement for the Respect for Marriage Coalition’s new “$1 million print and television ad campaign highlighting bipartisan support for marriage equality.”
As a result:
Bush spokeswoman Anne MacDonald said in a statement Wednesday that the former first lady ‘did not approve of her inclusion in this advertisement nor is she associated with the group that made the ad in any way…[w]hen she became aware of the advertisement last night, we requested that the group remove her from it.
Zack Ford’s unhinged response:
This request is a cowardly escape from her role as a public figure. If Bush did not want her support for marriage equality to be widely known or cited, she should not have written about it in her book or openly discussed it with Larry King on CNN. Her comments and her position are part of the public record, and unless her position has changed and she now opposes same-sex marriage, she doesn’t really have room to be making such a request.
If you’re used in a video for political purposes offering implicit approval for a campaign you don’t approve of, it’s well within your right to ask that you be removed from the video. For the commercial to not have gained her consent to include her is the true cowardly escape.
