I'm not sure what to make of Laura Bush's immodest display Saturday night before the White House Press Corp.
For those not in the know, the first lady stole the show at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner last Saturday night with a joke about her husband and the... um... proboscis of a horse. Also, she called herself a "Desperate Housewife," and suggested that she and second lady Lynne Cheney were frequent patrons at Chippendales.
Funny stuff.
Predictably, the Bush-validating mainstream-media is now howling about Laura's "wit" and telling us that this performance brought the "real" Laura Bush into the spotlight.
But in what sense is any of this true if the jokes were written, as the Times reports, by a speechwriter? Are we watching the “real Laura” if the delivery and timing were polished with the help of a professional comedian?
Moreover, jokes about Chippendales and horse privates? Ye Gods, what will the children think?
And, by "children" I mean those mighty, tighty-whitey-wearing moral crusaders at Focus on the Family and Toward Tradition.
Does it please them to hear the Fearless Leader's insufficiently submissive wife boasting of immoral habits? Are their hearts gladdened to see her effectuating an unclean tongue for the purpose of scoring a few political points? Back in the good old days, Clinton-haters had a word for this: pandering. And no one hated it more than some of the folks now cheering Laura’s “wit”