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The major papers are picking up a story that a communications director for Stephen Fincher, Republican Congressman from Tennessee, has done the incredible and incredulous: claim that President Obama's 13 year-old and 16 year-old daughters have no class and dress like they want a spot at the bar.
This of the daughters of the President of the United States.
From GOP aide's online dig at Obama daughters creates backlash--
The communications director for a Republican member of Congress ignited a firestorm this weekend after she criticized President Obama's teenage daughters in a Facebook post that touched a nerve even for Americans accustomed to political mudslinging.
Let me sprinkle some context here. This isn't a random "aide". We're talking about the Communications Director.
The Communications Director. The Communications Director of the Republican Congressman from Tennessee, the
#4 Most Racist State in the U.S. according to the crowdsourced website The Top Tens.
Tennessee, home of Memphis, posited to be The Most Racist City In America.
Tennessee, where Republicans work "to remove information related to slavery and our founding fathers from Tennessee textbooks".
Tennessee, where "One In Six Tennesseans Admits To Telling Unfunny Racist Jokes About The President".
Tennessee, where white supremacists gather, smiles and all--where over 30 legally-protected American white supremacy groups call home, a place from which one of only two white nationalist radio shows are broadcast.*
Tennessee: nicely, done!
If the Communications Director for the Republican Congressman from Tennessee, and former "New Media Political Manager" for the RNC, doesn't have enough prescience to understand the gravity of her breach of decorum in an era in which even devout Christian candidates for office claim that a 17 year-old pregnant daughter of a political candidate is off-limits politically--common sense, one would think!--then she should be fired, as communications is clearly not a forte of hers.
The Lauten diatribe is disdainful and snide at best and race-influenced at worst (even if that's hard to prove, as racism generally is). The first black First Daughters of the United States should not be made to sound like libertine seductresses dressed for lechery or jezebels eager to score drinks at a bar. Sasha Obama and Malia Obama are teenagers years out from legal drinking age who were dressed appropriately for teenagers and were reacting to lame jokes from their father before flashing pretty young smiles. But Elizabeth Lauten couldn't help herself:
Dear Sasha and Malia, I get you're both in those awful teen years, but you're a part of the First Family, try showing a little class. At least respect the part you play. Then again your mother and father don't respect their positions very much, or the nation for that matter, so I'm guessing you're coming up a little short in the good role model department. Nevertheless, stretch yourself. Rise to the occasion. Act like being in the White House matters to you. Dress like you deserve respect, not a spot at a bar. And certainly don't make faces during televised public events.
For the record, the only other examples I could find of adults who criticize the children of sitting presidents were the
National Rifle Association, who criticized Obama as a supposed hypocrite for assigning Secret Service details to protect his daughters (an innovation and perversion of power of the Obama era, as no other president has ever assigned Secret Service to protect his family before) and
GOP Congressmen like Iowa's Steve King, who agreed with a radio show caller that it's "hard to stomach" seeing Sasha and Malia on vacation at nice resorts.
Last week, a British politician resigned after poking an innocent picture that belied disdain for a 39 year-old working class White Van Man. You would think that in America, the same would be true of a politician's communications director who calls the teenage daughters of a sitting president little less than opportunists who dress scantily in order to score free alcohol.
Elizabeth Lauten should resign.
Bonus:
If you care to know, Elizabeth Lauten is an egotistical elitist who posts her perfect ACT and near-perfect SAT standardized admission tests scores and MENSA membership online for the world to see, because she clearly feels better than the rest of us, certainly better than the daughters of the United States.
Elizabeth Lauten is a member of Daughters of the American Revolution, "a historically white organization with a record of excluding blacks so ugly that Eleanor Roosevelt renounced her membership in protest" (and, no, having a black woman as leader of a small chapter doesn't make it any less racist than having Michael Steele as RNC Chair makes the GOP less fundamentally racist than it is).
Elizabeth Lauten, during her time as Marshal of the RNC, was also the proud organizer of noted racist Sarah Palin's "largest rally of campaign season" in 2008.
Elizabeth Lauten also served as New Media Director for Clint Didier, the Tea Party candidate wingnut who called Obama's administration a "Marxist utopia" and told Hillary Clinton that "the Redskins’ name honors Native Americans".
Elizabeth Lauten, furthermore, was the Press Secretary for Tea Party-backed Illinois GOP Representative Joe Walsh, who was unceremoniosly ‘kicked off the air’ over racist terms on radio and has alleged that "the Democratic Party wants African-Americans and Hispanics to be dependent on government".
Now, I'm not saying Elizabeth Lauten is a racist. I'm not even saying the string of people and initiatives she's worked tirelessly for in the last 9 years is racist. All I'm saying is that Elizabeth Lauten is incredibly lousy at communications generally--new media communications specifically--and should not have used her prominent place as a Congressional Communications Director to bash the teenage daughters of the President of the United States in a display of incredible denigration that highlights her immensely poor judgement, even though she should, having exercised free speech, keep her job.
But if you disagree with me, then, please, by all means, go ahead and call the Stephen Finger (R-TN) Washington office at (202) 225-4714 tomorrow after 9 AM, or the Arlington District Office at (901) 581-4718, or the Dyersburg District Office at (731) 285-0910, or the Jackson District Office at (731) 423-4848, or the Martin District Office at (731) 588-5190, or the Memphis District Office (901) 682-4422, or utilize this incredibly-hard-to-use-email-form and use the Memphis office's own address and zip code of 5384 POPLAR AVE STE 410, Memphis, TN 38119-0605 to send an email in order to voice your discontent right now. You might even contact two of the largest Tennessee newspapers, The Commercial Appeal or contact The Tennessean, if you so vehemently disagree with me that Elizabeth Lauten should keep her job.
It's a free country, after all, and bigots have a right to voice their opinions about the President's daughters' sartorial tastes as much as citizens have a right to voice their opinions on a Republican communication directors' fitness to be a publicly-elected Republican's communication director.
*That was me pulling The Race Card: a fictitious construct, created by actually-racist institutions (and popularized after OJ Simpson's acquittal in order to discredit legitimate criticism of race-influenced behavior in contemporary society) and responsible for the pervasive belief that drawing attention to racism is somehow a privilege, an unfair advantage, a pleasurable and--dare I say it--powerful (!!) exercise in free speech that extends from birth to death and is more positively impactful than actual, existing, still-in-progress racism is detrimental.
People, my personal opinion is that we cannot wish America to be better if we don't force its worst elements to be better. We cannot "The Secret" our way through racial fairness or a lessening in bigotry. We have got to be as relentless in fighting and uprooting racism, in all its tiny forms, as history has shown racism, in all its tiny forms, to be relentlessly pervasive.