Comments

1
Sasha and Malia's eyerolls were totally age-appropriate and a whole lotta awesome (speaking as a father).

That and fuck these reprehensible conservative lizards.
2
@1: Fully agreed. Even Obama mentioned not getting the whole event.
3
Don't skip over the part where she was arrested for shoplifting as a teenager.
4
Comments like Elizabeth Lauten's? Classless.
OH THE IRONY!
5
How come Lauten wasn't shot to death by police?
6
She seems to favor bright pink blazers with matching lipstick. Now that's klassy.
7
Bill Cosby has resigned from the board of Temple University.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014…
8
Sorry, but all she did was lose her job. It's not a career-ender. The Beltway takes care of its own, and she'll land something new before long.
10
@9: "And now we bring in Fox News contributor Elizabeth Lauten..."
12

Thanks for this, Dan.

Maybe this woman should try and imagine the extraordinary awkwardness/self consciousness of the teenage years combined with growing up in the blinding spotlight that is the White House.

How would she, or any of us have done?

13
If she were just some random staffer for this unknown Rep. Steven Fincher, it would just be an idiotic post on social media. But she was the FUCKING COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR!!! The one person in the office who's job it is to make sure that no one says anything that may put her boss in a bad light. She should be fired, not for what she posted, but for not realizing it was her job to make sure no one in the office does anything this boneheaded. Her career in communications directing just ended, I hope.
14
Malia's skirt was inappropriate for a press event with the President, even if he is her dad. Someone handler blundered with this. I'm not saying that nasty harpy was right, the girls certainly deserve respect, but a skirt that short is suitable for shopping at the mall or hanging out with friends. It's like that volleyball team that wore flip flops to the White House, or a guy showing up in sweatpants to meet the President. Just looks tacky.
15
Haters gonna hate
16
After 8 years suffering through shrub's spawn, THIS is what GOP flacks consider "disrespectful"? Go figure.

@14:

Thanks for the slut-shaming concern-trolling there. This was a freaking non-story photo op to "pardon" a freaking Thanksgiving turkey, not a State Dinner. So, lighten up and do try to drag yourself into the 21st Century.
17
I'm not a slut shaming concern troll, I'm a mom of teenaged girls the same age as those two. I equated Malia's skirt to flip-flops--how is that slut shaming? There's a time and a place for micro miniskirts and that was neither.
18
I was confused by the "spot at a bar" comment because I thought the video was something unrelated.

Nope, there they are... wearing normal-ass clothes. At, as CNN notes, the very solemn turkey pardoning ceremony.

WTF possessed this lady to do this? This is baffling. What did she expect to happen?
19
@14

Surely we can evaluate Obama's daughters on the quality of their characters rather than on the length of their skirts.

So far I haven't heard of them going on drunken binges or shoplifting sprees, like "good" Republican girls do - they seem to lead normal, law-abiding lives.
20
Don't listen to those people Marreena, dear. I don't know how a casual, non-hateful comment about a skirt can possibly be described as "slut shaming". Some people just don't understand fashion.



As for Ms. Lauten, as I've said before, Republicans are horrible people.


21
@20 they didn't all used to be, but it's getting pretty obvious that nowadays they certainly are. Nixon today would be considered a flaming commie. It's pretty bad when Nixon seems like a good guy in comparison.
22
Just normal teenage girls. Like, how boring is this Dad?
Whydya make us do this.. Nice to see they are not cardboard cut outs.
23
The nice folks at CNN said KIDS ARE OFF LIMITS....

did anyone get that memo to Danny?

his girlcrush on the Palin daughter was so creepy.
24
R.E.S.P.E.C.T.

In the Gommoran Special Olympics of Character EVERYBODY get it, no matter what their behavior.

Because no one is accountable for nuthing....
25
Do you know what "reinforces sexist cultural attitudes that make the world a much more dangerous place for women and girls"?

Pornography.
26
Ms Elizabeth "Classy" Laughten got arrested when she was a teen and she's got the nerve to run down the Obama girls and their parents? What a hypocritical cow.

http://gawker.com/the-gop-staffer-who-cr…
27
Interesting, the troll is female.
28
No wonder she's so delusional about male desire. Safely assuming she's not a lesbian, that's rather sad. Or maybe she's asexual. But would an asexual person be so driven to repost about true love?

See, now THAT is concern trolling.
29
@18 she probably expected to get a lot of publicity and probably a job as commentator or activist of some sort. The message goes right down the list of current outrage triggers- value-judging, slut-shaming, subtle racism and sexism, even a few socioeconomic digs thrown in. This was a carefully crafted statement hitting all the repuke's fave opinions of women and their place. Remember this woman's name, although you've never heard of her, she'll be a big name from here out.
30
@14: You're not going to slam a certain someone for wearing a T-shirt to the White House?
31
@14- Fashion is dead. Long live the age of casual everyday, everywhere, until the end of humanity! Cargo capris 4eva!
32
Ok, now taking bets on the number of commenters who will miss the fact that the original post contains a link to the story about her shoplifting and decide they need to tell us all?

We're already at 2, so I'm setting the over/under at 4.
33
@30 if it was a guy, I totally am. Women can get away with T-shirts at the White House. Unfair double standard, but there it is.
34
must be a slow news day... has cnn found flight 370 by using google earth yet?
35
@32

I put my money on over.

And hey, did you know that Lauten was arrested for shoplifting when she was 17?
36
Did Phoebe get stupider and change her name?

Anyway, it looks like Lauten does have her own spot at the bar.

http://guestofaguest.com/directory/eliza…
37
Compared to Bushe's kids this aint shit. Get real.
38
It doesn't matter what they wear, some anti-Obama troll would complain about something. Can you imagine if they dressed like little Republican princesses in little designer outfits? The right wing would have some shit fit about "the imperial Presidency" trying to act like "a royal family."

So. They wore their own ordinary damned clothes, like they probably wear to school everyday, looking like perfectly normal kids, kept their own personalities, and reacted like perfectly normal, lovable daughters, not robots or spokesmodels. God bless them. This has been one of the most refreshing First Families in a long, long time. No wonder the Republicans hate them.
39
If you check her YouTube channel you will discover that she only recently re-found Jesus (in the last couple of years), so anything she did at seventeen doesn't count because forgiveness, or something.
40
Usefully, the last paragraph would fully justify my executing Ms. Lauten, were I a cop.
41
@17:

According to the feminists I know, criticizing a woman for "inappropriate dress" based on, say, the length of her skirt, would in fact be considered a form of slut-shaming, because it implies they are being subjected to an arbitrary and demeaning standard based on patriarchal expectations of female conduct. You don't have to agree with their definition, but that doesn't invalidate it, because there's plenty of evidence out there of women denigrating other women in a similar fashion (cit ref Ms Lauten's original post), even if it's done inadvertently or unconsciously.
42
@41 Call the fashion police. :D



I suppose in that case I am a slut-shamer, which is kind of bizarre since I am always instructing my girls not to denigrate other girls as sluts for what they wear and to always be sex-positive. That does seem to be pushing it though--do they think that having dress codes for both sexes at work and school is slut-shaming?



Hmm...I know the answer to that one--having dress codes at school is considered slut-shaming. I suppose I am a slut-shamer then, but so is everyone who reads People magazine.



I was thinking that slut-shaming had to with thinking that women were inviting sexual assault by wearing certain clothes. In my mind that is never okay.
43
@42:

As I've been given to understand it, there is something of a spectrum to slut-shaming, ranging at one end from simple criticism of what a female chooses to wear, to the assumption that women who wear certain types of clothing are "asking for" sexual advances, all the way up to moral disapprobation of women for expressing their sexuality in any form whatsoever. But, the larger point seems to be that negative criticism to what women choose to wear contributes to their dis-empowerment by promulgating patriarchal-enforced standards of conduct that deny them the right to self-expression and individuality.
44
If that's the definition of the patriarchy then Tim Gunn rules the patriarchy.
45
Look, I don't like how the repubs have their knives out for Pres. Obama. And yes, her tweet was classless.



But - don't we all at some point in our lives say something we shouldn't? Given that she apologized for the tweet, I'm not sure she should have lost her job over it. Yes, I know, she's communications director. Yes, I know, it was a stupid, thoughtless tweet.



I guess I would just like for us all to relax a little and give ourselves some permission to fuck up.



Reading a book recently by Bryan Stevenson called "Just Mercy". In it, he says something like "we are all better than the worst thing we have ever done" or something like that. Meaning we shouldn't only be judged by the worst thing we ever did, but by other parts of our lives.(And of course Lauten should have considered this before criticizing the girls, but - hey, we all make mistakes.)



And digging up Lauten's shoplifting from age 17 is pretty tacky in my opinion.



I know mine is a minority opinion; and believe me, I'm a die-hard progressive who abhors what the republican party has become. But- in this case - I lean toward a little mercy.
46
@39 - Meaning, she found Jesus when she decided feigning being religious would help her upward mobility in Republican politics?

When she apologized after "hours of prayer," even conservative commentators criticized her over the idea that she needed to pray at all, much less for hours, to decide that what she did was wrong.
47
@45- Mercy is for the weak.

And the GOP isn't weak, so why should we show them mercy?
48
@47: "Showing mercy to an enemy creates a spiral of destruction."
Master Rajivari's Fifth Principle

Please wait...

Comments are closed.

Commenting on this item is available only to members of the site. You can sign in here or create an account here.


Add a comment
Preview

By posting this comment, you are agreeing to our Terms of Use.