Posted on 05/03/2005 2:10:11 PM PDT by EveningStar
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at michellemalkin.com ...
I agree, those jokes were a suck up to the Hollywood crowd. Would you want to hear those jokes with your family present? That stuff is so beneath her.
It's useless...I give up......
Can you believe this?
Don't give up!
BTW, what were you trying to accomplish?
Don't give up!
BTW, what were you trying to accomplish?
Don't give up!
BTW, what were you trying to accomplish?
Michelle Malkin? She must be a city girl. The Holier than Thou group will feel so vindicated and the hijacking of FR by the Taliban right will be complete.
Glad to know I fall squarely in the middle.
These were the only 2 areas that bothered me as well. Just a little too crass. Got to watch the bedroom humor. The culture has already slipped way too far into the disgusting area for the White House to indulge in it as well.
I agree that this was a departure from what is expected of Laura Bush. The horse joke, though, isn't offensive to country folk, I don't beleive. Kinda like laughing at those who don't know a steer from a bull. I was actually more offended at the reference to Desperate Housewives than any of the rest of the material.
She was great and could pull it off precisely because she has class and is not the same as liberal women. As Rush said, if anyone was offended, they need to get a life. She was wonderful and a more beautiful classy woman you could not find anywhere.
I'm on fiber-optic lkine right now. They said it was fast, but I had NO idea!
Michelle understands this, and Nancy Reagans speechwritwer even wrote the material!
I didn't have a problem with any of the jokes she told. I thought she was pretty funny.
Wow, calling some conservatives the Taliban. That's pretty sad.
Are conservatives not allowed to laugh anymore?
Consider her audience.
the real point to be made about these jokes is not how people personally feel about them - everyone is entitled to their own opinion of course, and have different levels of what they accept as humor.
the real point is that we should have recognized that SOME people who vote with us, object to this. Like that angry 74 year old evangelical grandmother who called into Michael Savage yesterday. And we have a slim majority in this country, we can't afford to be p**sing off people over nonsense like this dumb dinner. what do we have to gain by letting the first lady do this? nothing, there is no upside, only a downside. politically, its not a positive for our side.
What is that?....I just got broaband yesterday...and now Im behind again...
And an unintended consquence of the near take-over of FR by the extremist right is that I, a former so far to the right I was called Atilla the Hun, have moved to the center and a MUCH more moderate position. There is NO way I want to be associated with the extremists on the right. They are an embarrassment. And the left, well, they are dangerous. So what's left? The middle. An unintended consequence that the Holier than Thou brigade has caused.
No I can't....have you ever seen anything analyzed as much as this horse joke..?
1. The horse joke is typical earthy humor on the ranch/farm. Nobody with any country roots would get put out by that joke, I don't care how religious or otherwise puritanical.
2. The stripper joke was funny precisely because Laura Bush and Lynn Cheney are ladies. The thought of those classy ladies at Chippendales was funny because it was completely ridiculous. It wouldn't be ridiculous if it were Terry Kerry or some other Democrat skank.
I've been paying only some attention to this topic...but, your comment, Peach, caught my eye.
Pretty strong stuff. What have I missed? Thanks for 'splaining.
EXCELLENT. Another one agrees with me. Even the Bible study leader brought it up last evening, and said much the same thing. :-)
Laura was hilarious, but I agree, some of her jokes were a little declasse in such a public setting. Considering the fact that she almost never participates in such events and we rarely see her giving any kind of speech or interview, all the huffing and puffing about her jokes is a little overdone. We probably won't hear from Laura again about anything this year except for her book festival and the White House Christmas decorations.
broadband...
I lived in upstate NY until I was 14 and vacated there until I was 22.
The joke around the Adirondecks, told in ALL company including children, is about the NYC city slicker who came to farm country upstate and couldn't tell the difference between a horse and a cow.
If this offends you, it's probably best to dig a deep hole in your back yard and have someone bury you, because you'll never be able to avoid being offended.
For cryin' out loud, people, she told a joke about farm animals and her husband's ineptitude in dealing with them. It's a joke that has been around for eons. It's not like she used a strong of four letter words, or dressed in a skimpy little pop dive outfit and mounted the horse on stage. She did what every other normal housewife in the country does... poked fun at her husband. This whole reaction has to explain why when I go camping now, I have a hard time finding sticks for kindling. If those sticks are located where they seem to be these days, you can keep them. I certainly don't want them back, and your proctologist would charge double to remove them anyway.
Tasteless SKANK.... has quite a ring to it..
You can almost smell the phrase..
I agree with Michelle EXCEPT that the reason Laura can get away with it and not TerRAYza is because Laura has tons more class in the first place.
For Laura it is an obvious joke.
For TerRAYza we would be wondering if she really WAS at a stripper joint with dollar bills...
The difference is that Laura was joking about her own husband. If THK was saying the jokes, she would have been slamming the President not poking fun at sKerry. Heck, if THK were to say the same stuff of sKerry, he would probably have had her arrested.
Nahhh phooeeyy. I just ignore the weirdos and stay the way I always have. Nothing changing here.
Look, I'm sorry but I find that kind of scatalogical humor disgusting, I certainly don't want to hear about strippers and equine masturbators from the first lady.
everyone has to fit a certain mold you know.
if someone is offended by something and another is no then obviously the person offended is in the wrong, right?
i thought that was a trademark of the left but after a few years at fr i've found i was very mistaken.
I, for one, would have walked out with a mean glare on my ugly face.
Then again, I wasn't invited.
Which is a shame because she speaks well. And she did the other night as well. It's funny both she and her daughters are caught in sexual jokes. I don't remember Bush ever telling one.
I wouldn't care, except that the culture is so sex-oriented, that some don't really need to hear it from the White House as well.
We have gone from being a political web site to being taken over by people pretending to be Christians.
On various thread the First Lady has been called White Trash, a whore, and more. Her Christianity has been questioned because of ONE joke.
If the President and First Lady aren't Christian enough for us, then I give up.
There is a certain faction on FR that CONSTANTLY pretends they are Christian and the rest of us aren't Christian enough or conservative enough.
#1. Anyone can pretend to be anything on the internet.
#2. I live in the Bible Belt where you can't walk 20 steps without bumping into a Baptist Church. Nearly all my friends and neighbors are Baptist. NOT ONE of them has a problem with the jokes.
#3. I think MOST of the people pretending to be outraged at the First Lady's jokes are NOT what they say they are.
#4. I think they are paid opinion shapers who come here to stir dissent.
#5. Read the book for which Jim Robinson wrote the foreward -- Hillary's Secret War. It details exactly how the opinion shapers on the left come to web sites ilke FR and have been tracked as coming from the DNC and the Washington Post, etc., to come here and try to shape opinion. All under the guise of Christianity and conservatism, of course.
#6. Think about how many people you have met in real life who would be upset about a joke about some city slicker coming into farm country trying to milk a male horse and not being able to tell the difference between a cow and a horse. It's a joke older than I am.
Thank you, Michelle Malkin! Finally--somebody gets it!
Laura Bush pandering to the lowbrow minds of the Washington press corps...something I never thought I would see from this usually gracious First Lady.
My question is why would anyone be aghast when discussing the anatomy of a horse? Don't adults teach children to use correct anatomy terms and to feel no shame when discussing the body? This is a tempest in a teapot.
Oh boo hoo. "Mommy those right wing extremists made me into a moderate!" No major loss judging from your posts.
Michelle Malkin rocks!
***** ***** *****
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.
BTW, I liked her speech. And here it is:
Not that old joke. Not again. Ladies and gentlemen, I've been attending these dinners for years, and just quietly sitting there. Well I've got a few things I wanna say for a change. This is going to be fun, because he really doesn't have a clue about what I'm gonna say next.
George always says he's delighted to come to these press dinners. Baloney! He's usually in bed by now. I'm not kidding. I said to him the other day: George, if you really want to end tyranny in the world, you're going to have to stay up later.
I am married to the president of the United States and here's our typical evening. Nine o'clock. Mister excitement here is sound asleep. And I'm watching desperate housewives. With Lynn Cheney. Ladies and gentlemen, I am a desperate housewife. I mean, if those women on that show think they're desperate, they ought to be with George. One night, after George went to bed, Lynn Cheney, Condi Rice, Karen Hughues and I went to Chippendale's. I wouldn't even mention it, except Ruth Ginsburg and Sandra Day O'Connor saw us there. I won' tell you what happened, but Lynn's Secret Service codename is now "dollar bill".
But George and I are complete opposites. I'm quiet, he's talkative. I'm introverted, he's extraverted. I can pronounce "nuclear". The amazing thing however is that George and I were just meant to be. I was a librarian who spent twelve hours a day in the library. Yet somehow I met George. We met and married and I became one of the regulars up at Kennebunkport. All the Bushes love Kennebunkport. Which is like Crawford but without the nightlife. People ask me what it's like to be up there with the whole Bush clan. Let me put it this way: first prize: three day vacation with the Bush family. Second price: ten days.
Speaking of prizes brings me to my mother-in-law. So many mothers today are just not involved in their children's lives. Not a problem with Barbara Bush. People often wonder what my mother-in-law is really like. People think she's a sweet, grandmotherly Aunt Bee type. She's actually more like ... hmmm ... Don Corleone. Cedric, am I doing alright?
I saw my in-laws down at the ranch over Easter. We like it down there. George didn't know much about ranches when we bought the place. Andover and Yale don't have a real strong ranching program. But I'm proud of George. He has learned a lot about ranching, since that first year when he tried to milk the horse. What's worse it was a male horse. Now of course, he spends his days clearing brush, cutting trails, taking down trees, or as the girls call it: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. George's answer to any problem at the ranch is to cut it down with the chainsaw. Which I think is why he and Cheney and Rumsfeld get along so well.
It's always very interesting to see how the ranch air invigorates people when they come down from Washington. Recently, when vice president Cheney was down, he got up early one morning, he put up his hiking boots, and he went on a brisk, 20- to 30-foot walk.
But actually, in all seriousness, I do love the ranch, and I love the whole Bush family. I was an only child, and when I married into the extended Bush clan, I got brothers and sisters and wonderful in-laws all of whom opened their arms to me. And included in the package, I got this guy here. I think when you marry someone, you unconsciously are looking for something in your spouse, to help fulfill something in you. And George did that for me. He brought fun and energy into my life, and so many other things. George is a very good listener, he's easy to be around, and on top of it all, he's a loving father whose daughters absolutely adore him.
So in the future, when you see me just quietly sitting up here, I want you to know I'm happy to be here for a reason: I love and enjoy being with the man who usually speaks to you on these occasions. So George and I thank you for inviting us, thank you for all the good work that you and the press do, and thank you for your very kind hospitality this evening.
It is. It's also about being agenda driven, easily led by the paid opinion shapers on this site, and classic over-reach by the extremist right who thinks the president "owes" them and they can drive the party's agenda.
Lose the big tent Republican party and we'll never win another election.
The mental image of Ruth Bader Ginsburg at Chippendales is just funny!
Hon, you just don't get it.
If this has moved ME to a moderate position, it's moved lots of people to a moderate position.
And lose the Big Tent Republican and you can kiss future election wins goodbye.
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