Posted on 05/02/2005 6:00:13 AM PDT by fight_truth_decay
Who knew? First lady Laura Bush took over the podium from her husband at Saturday night's annual White House Correspondents' Association dinner and knocked 'em dead, keeping Washington's most powerful politicos in stitches as she worked the ballroom like a seasoned stand-up comic.
CUT
Although Washington's movers and shakers laughed at Mrs. Bush's performance, some in the press woke up with a Sunday morning hangover and began to criticize her monologue as immodest at best and downright bawdy at worst.
"Laura Bush cracks risque jokes at the White House Correspondents' dinner," sniffed Agence France-Presse. CNN reporter Elaine Quijano, who attended the dinner, also apparently had her sensibilities scarred by some of the first lady's quips.
"In some respects, I think for some folks it was a little shocking because she kind of crossed the line a little bit in some people's minds," she said.
"It was very risque," the Nation's David Korn said yesterday on Fox News. "I was wondering what the social conservatives and James Dobson had to say about all these jokes that were laced with sexual innuendo. Not a very family-values-type speech. I'm not sure I want to explain a lot of those jokes to my 4-year-old."
Eyebrows were raised by the first lady's bit about the president's ranching skills, which Mrs. Bush said her husband lacked because the elite schools he attended, Andover and Yale, "don't have a real strong ranching program."
She then added: "He's learned a lot about ranching since that first year when he tried to milk the horse. What's worse, it was a male horse."
The crowd howled. The joke, a female Associated Press reporter said, "had women giggling in the bathroom."
(Excerpt) Read more at washtimes.com ...
Sad? Yeah, your position is so superior that you have to insult those who disagree with you.
Welcome to Free Republic. Great first post.
:o)
Bravo, encore! And I like your "wife's test."
I'm a wife to my beloved husband, and a mom of three sons and a daughter. Which brings me to another problem with the First Lady's act that I've tried to make on this topic --but which doesn't get as much attention as "Desperate Housewives," Chippendales, and milking male horses.
That problem is that Laura's shtick echoed the prevailing culture's ridicule of men, especially white straight Republican men (gay men, Dims, and men of color get a pass).
I'm sick, sick sick of all the commercials and so-called comedies on TV that make men out to be inadequate doofuses.
And it seemed to me that Laura Bush was jumping on that bandwagon by hinting at sexual inadequacy --the whole "Mr. Excitement" thing, in the context of the Desperate Housewife/Chippendale innuendo.
Now I don't need a lecture that "it's not real, it's just a joke" so "lighten up" (wish I had a nickel for every time I heard that chestnut); or condescending instruction that the president is manly enough that we all know he's not inadequate.
That's not the point. The point is that there is far too much of this ridicule going on in our popular culture --to the huge detriment of our social fabric (which is exactly what the anti-family Left is out to achieve).
And Laura Bush just put her imprimatur on it.
As I noted in #410, Laura made several great jokes that gently poked fun at her husband, without crossing the line. But the Mr. Excitement shtick did.
If my daughter or my future daughters-in-law ever ridicule their husbands that way in public, you can bet they'll get a little talking-to from this future mother-in-law !
You almost hit it dead on:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1395119/posts?page=712#712
The "whore" thing is interesting. The image of a woman stuffing a dollar in a male stripper's shorts--an image articulated by the first lady for national consumption--is an image that most believing people would associate with a non-believer at best. (Neo-cons, Rinos, Yuppie-lites, Godless philistines can stop reading here.) Does anyone seriously think, when they take their wedding vows, that "forsaking all others" means the freedom to take drunken hops around nearly naked men, stuffing money in their pants? As believers, that is the sort of standard we would expect from the modern divorce culture. Even joking about it, when you know the real consequences of sin, when you have been delivered from it, when you have seen the marriages broken by pornography, and when you have to participate, unwillingly, in the great welfare state that results from it, it can't help but arouse the ire of those who "hunger and thirst after righteousness."
The simple fact is that a woman course enough to discuss this in public, in this way, has adopted a world view that is distinctly non-Christian, that is far from the Proverbs 31 standard set down for the church. The coursening that comes about when a woman takes money for sex, or pays money for titillation, as in Chippendales, is precisely the sensibility we see in Laura Bush's remarks. The fact remains that none of our 18th, 19th, or early 20th century fore-mothers would have used this sort of joke in public. I dare you to find one first lady that has engaged in this sort of humor, for public consumption, prior to 1960. Most of them would have correctly assumed these words came from a poor lost soul.
I highly doubt that most of you claiming the moral high ground here really are.
There's no way to differentiate between what you say, and what the biased left wrongly stereotypes real Christians as thinking.
The people whom I KNOW are Christians, almost to a person, were not offended by what the First Lady said.
Methinks your politics has gotten in the way of your common sense, and your use of the moral high ground is nothing but a sham.
BALDERDASH indeed, well put Pip!
Another possibility is that I believe the Bible is the timeless Word of God. My wife does, too.
Probably because you do your side more harm than good. Y'know, making all Christians appear to be needlebutts.
Brilliant post very well said.
It seems obvious that some people do not know that. It is much ado about nothing!
I see you conveniently overlook how others here have had their Christian status called into question or outright bashed.
There do appear to be some posters here who are feigning a Christianity in order to caricature us all.
The great Rush Limbaugh, veteran now of how many marriages? He's the perfect apologist for Laura's trench mouth.
Anyone whose nose is out of joint because of what the First Lady said IS sad.
Don't be so sensitive, OK?
.. it's no wonder that otherwise sympathetic Romans found themselves rooting for the lions ..
I pray for the sanity of any woman who's found herself a victim of your captivity.
And btw, my previous discussion offer stands.
Please FReepmail me if you want on or off my ‘miscellaneous’ ping list.
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