It is really rare that I disagree with Michelle Malkin, but Michelle writes today: “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.” Yes, unnecessary, but the Whoopi stuff was just forthrightly crass. (And, I might add, I believe that was the night the Kerry campaign and Hollywood claimed to represent America in all their crassness. Laura Bush best represented Americans Saturday night in her ode to her man and family at the end of her schtick, when she got real.) On Saturday night, I ran into more than one person who hadn’t even gotten the horse thing when it was delivered. Maybe there was just enough subtlety that she saved the office of the First Lady from ill repute.
Don’t get me wrong, as I’ve said, I would have totally avoiding the horsing myself. Like Michelle, I tend to be a G-Rated conservative–unless I’m writing about topics that would require an R if on the silver screen (say, a partial-birth abortion). And while I totally get South Park humor, the 4th-grade-boy kinda stuff I could generally do without. (My teen love (still one to many a “desperate housewife,” Simon Le Bon, didn’t charm me with his burping and fart jokes in Duran Duran’s Rolling Stone interview this week.) But that we’re even talking about this White House Correspondents Dinner stuff on Wednesday, about a silly dinner where professional adults gush over celebs—some 15-minute specials, I might add (no offense, American Idol contestants/last year, Apprentice losers)–seems silly. As I’ve told people in the last few days who’ve asked, we choose our battles, and this I, at least, don’t have the energy to get worked up over.
But, remember, I’m the one who thinks Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo is a conservative movie—and on marriage and family kinda levels. Never let the kids watch it, but for the big kids, it’s just fine and funny and clever in silly ways.
Yes, I worry about the coarsening of our culture, but I don’t really think that a White House where people don’t swear is contributing to it much. And I don’t think that’s me trying to be hip.