Former GOP staffer Elizabeth Lauten’s Twitter comments on what she considered the subpar behavior of the Obama daughters at the annual turkey pardoning ceremony were ill-advised.
If Lauten thought the Obama daughters were not dressed as well as she might have wished or were doing a little eye rolling while dorky ol’ Dad was pardoning the turkey (he does this every year!), well Lauten should have kept quiet—at least on social media.
It’s traditional to cut the president’s kids some slack and all in all this is a good tradition. But really—should this small episode—a GOP’s staffer’s criticism of the First Daughters—have been blown up into international news? It made the front page of the U.K.’s online Daily Telegraph!
And, unlike CNN’s mean-spirited Carol Costello, who cackled maliciously introducing a Palin daughter segment and yet kept her job, Lauten resigned and is now jobless. The media has been far more zealous pursuing the Elizabeth Lauten story than the one about the former Democratic Senate staffer who just pled guilty to a charge of sexual abuse. As one blogger asks, “Where’s the wailing and gnashing of teeth over rape culture? Oh yes, he’s a Democrat. Carry on.”
The Free Beacon reports that this once obscure GOP Hill staffer is now “being inundated with threatening messages and major media outlets are pouring resources into tracking her moves and digging into her past.” This is mean and weird—but it is how the malicious and biased contemporary media operates.
In a piece headlined, “Dear Media: This Elizabeth Lauten Nonsense Is Why Everybody Hates You,” Mollie Hemingway writes:
See, somehow — and I don’t know if this was a reporter idea or an editor idea or just a complete breakdown of journalistic prudence on all sides — but somehow the Washington Post took a “foreign affairs” reporter and put him on the investigation of Lauten.
And that’s a real thing that happened.
Terrence McCoy wrote “One too many opinions from Hill staffer Elizabeth Lauten, who attacked Obama’s daughters and resigned,” a thorough digging up of dirt from her high school and college years. She had opinions on Darfur and Saddam Hussein, y’all.
Yes, the Washington Post had a reporter dig up dirt on a low-level former staffer who dared to criticize the presidential family. Is this real life?
Mollie goes on to mention that Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus lambasted Lauten for her mild criticism of the Obama daughters and then recalled that she herself did something very similar to the Bush girls—Marcus even mentioned their cleavage. But, hey, is was Republican daughter cleavage! She quotes John Podhoretz noticing that that Marcus has a double standard…for herself.