Michelle Malkin complains:
[Mrs. Bush’s] off-color stripper and horse jokes [at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner] crossed the line. Can you blame Howard Stern for feeling peeved and perplexed? And let’s face it: if Teresa (“I’m cheeky!”) Heinz Kerry had delivered Mrs. Bush’s First Lady Gone Mildly Wild routine, social conservative pundits would be up in arms over her bad taste and lack of dignity.
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. . . .
It seems to me that such criticism of Laura Bush’s humor is misguided, because it misses a couple of critical distinctions:
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Dignity vs. Civility: Whoopi Goldberg’s Bush jokes at a Democratic fundraiser in 2004 were criticized not because they contained sexual innuendo as such, but because they were rude — they were vulgar, mean-spirited attacks.
There was nothing uncivil about Laura Bush’s friendly humor. Now it might have been undignified, but while we should (nearly) always be very civil, there are times to be more dignified and times to not worry that much about dignity. There are different standards of propriety for an intimate dinner than for the State of the Union address. There are different standards of propriety for a function involving professionals, especially ones from a circle in which mildly off-color humor is not uncommon, than for church. (I should say that not only urbane coastal circles appreciate some mildly off-color humor; my understanding is that Western ranchers have been known for this, too.)
Civility in public discourse is great. Dignity in dinner-time humor is not as necessary and not even always desirable.
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Adults vs. Children: “G,” recall, is rating aimed at advising parents about whether a movie is suitable for their children. I don’t see much that’s improper — or even unconservative — about having different standards for what one says around adults than for what one says around children. Some things, of course, are vulgar enough to be unpleasant even when said around adults; and naturally people will differ on such questions, as they do on other questions of taste. But it’s a mistake to measure proper speech in adult company by the same standards suitable for children.
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Likely Willing Listeners vs. Likely to Be Offended Listeners: This is the toughest line of all to draw, especially when one is speaking to a group of 3000 people; but all of us have to draw it in some measure. Walking around in public wearing sexually themed remarks on one’s T-shirt is different from speaking to people whose sentiments and tastes one can in some measure estimate, and who one has reason to think will find the remarks funny or at least not terribly offensive.
My sense from all I’ve heard is that Laura Bush did properly gauge her audience’s views. Some people who had heard about what she said have obviously gotten offended; but not many, and (to my knowledge) very few of those who were actually in the room, as a sort of captive audience for her humor. I suspect she wouldn’t make the same jokes in front of a convention of Methodist ministers (apologies in advance if I’ve misjudged the Methodists here!). And I doubt that one can fault her for seriously offending her audience.
So the bottom line: I think both “everyone should say anything they want, and no-one should criticize them for it” and “any off-color humor anywhere is in bad taste” aren’t terribly sound approaches. Like much that goes on in social existence, the rules have to be complex, nuanced, and context-sensitive; analogies should be made cautiously, so that the friendly bit of naughtiness isn’t confused with nasty vulgarism, and children aren’t confused with adults. Conservatism at its best has been quite aware of all this. And Laura Bush seems more in tune with it here, I think, than Michelle Malkin.
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