News Flash

As with all of my news flashes, this one is late.

My glaring faults with timeliness aside, Michelle Malkin's outraged, OUTRAGED, I tell 'ya, about Laura Bush's comedy success at the White House Correspondent's Dinner on Saturday night. She even got some time on O'Reilly last night, which I didn't bother watching because I had to see what happened to Locke on Lost.

From her blog:

{...}Most of Mrs. Bush's humor at the correspondents' dinner was just right: Edgy but not over the edge. But I think the stripper and horse jokes were totally beneath her.

Just put it to the other-shoe test: If it were Teresa Heinz Kerry standing up on the dais telling the same jokes, the conservative commentariat would be buzzing for the rest of the year about what a tasteless skank she is.

"Lighten up?" How about cleaning up? The First Lady resorting to cheap horse masturbation jokes is not much better than Whoopi Goldberg trafficking in dumb puns on the Bush family name. Unlike many Beltway and Manhattan commentators, I do not think the Wonkette-ization of the White House is a good thing. {...}

From her column:

{...}The First Lady resorting to horse masturbation jokes is not much better than Whoopi Goldberg trafficking in dumb puns on the Bush family name. It was wholly unnecessary.

Self-censorship is a conservative value. In a brilliant commencement speech at Hillsdale College last year Heritage Foundation president Ed Feulner called on his audience to resist the coarsened rhetoric of our time: "If we are to prevail as a free, self-governing people, we must first govern our tongues and our pens. Restoring civility to public discourse is not an option. It is a necessity."

Lighten up, you say? No thanks. I'd rather be a G-rated conservative who can only make my kids giggle than a South Park/Desperate Housewives conservative whose goal is getting Richard Gere and Jane Fonda to snicker. Giving the Hollyweird Left the last laugh is not my idea of success.

Yeah, I'll say lighten up, but first off, I tell Ms. Malkin, to get a freakin' clue.

First off, it wasn't a horse masturbation joke: it was a joke that honed directly at the fact that W. didn't grow up on a farm, despite his "Ranch Owner" props, hence, didn't he know which animal to milk. Any horse masturbation that *might* have occurred was strictly accidental, hence the joke. Hahahahaha. That's funny, right? Not according to Ms. Malkin, who seems to think Mrs. Bush's comedy routine is now on par with the regular ass-f***ing commentary at Wonkette.

But, just in case this hyperbole didn't push you into the Downward Facing Dog position, Malkin decides to make some sort of wild leap into the "what this all means for Conservatives" realm. She claims that "self-censorship is a conservative value." To back up this point, she quotes from a speech the president of the Heritage Foundation gave at Hillsdale College. Yeah. That's right. Hillsdale. That bastion of Cutting-Edge Conservative Thought (TM) where the founder had a nineteen-year long adulterous affair with his daughter-in-law, who then committed suicide. You see, if I was Malkin, I could easily make the leap that because Feulner was speaking at Hillsdale his declaration that we must keep our tongues and pens in check was a way of saying that the scandale at Hillsdale never happened. Furthermore we can extrapolate from Feulner's commentary that this scandale means NOTHING about the state of Conservatism in America, let alone taint all the good work they've done at Hillsdale. That "self-censorship" and keeping it civil means to sweep the non-conservative actions of the president of a conservative college---actions some might be justified in lumping into the hypocrisy category---under the carpet and simply hoping the lump under said carpet doesn't become too noticeable.

Hmmm?

I find I must resort to the linguistic follies of the Wayan Brothers to respond to both---Malkin's and mine---leaps of the imagination.

Ahem.

Homey don't play that.

But then again, "In Living Color" wasn't G-Rated so she probably won't get that.

I digress, but it's obvious that Malkin just doesn't get is that "self-censorship" should, indeed, be a thing unto oneself. As in, if someone's language offends you, you should probably go elsewhere, not moan and caterwaul about what it means for Conservatism that a Conservative First Lady cracked a joke about going to Chippendales. When it comes to language and the topics it is employed to describe, you can be broad minded and skip over what you find offensive because someone else might find it funny. There is a choice involved, in other words. And that choice resides with the listener, not the speaker. It does not mean you should censor yourself to the point where you don't offend even the most purehearted of listeners. Furthermore, to blindly dictate that "self-censorship" is such an important part of Conservatism smacks of the politically correct movement of the left.

To quote protein wisdom himself:

{...}let me just note that the measure of one’s conservatism is NOT tied to one’s vocabulary so much as it is to one’s political philosophy. And in many ways social conservatism—with its desire to dictate “proper” or “decorous” speech—is simply dressing the PC-sensibilities of the left in the starched, high-collared clothing of neo-Victorian morality.{...}

To claim that "self-censorship is a Conservative value" offends me. Malkin, will, undoubtedly, blow my offense off because, of course, her offense is greater than mine and, of course, has more serious ramifications attached to it, or so I suspect she would argue. Where exactly is the fairness in that action, I ask you, my devoted Cake Eater Readers? Is not my offense at her puritanical attitude worth the same in this marketplace of ideas? Am I not worth as much as Malkin is, intellectually speaking, because I drop the occasional f-bomb into my writings? Well, golly gosh! I'm mightily ticked off! I might just have to write a post about it...

Posted by Kathy at May 5, 2005 01:05 PM