Tony Perkins and the Family Research Council are oblivious to their own hypocrisy. |
I want to be blunt here.
A lot of the pearl-clutching, hand wringing, and jockeying for the moral high ground with regards to Michelle Wolf's performance at the recent White House Correspondent's Dinner (WHCD) is some major bullshit. Why do I say this? Because the Family Research Council has gotten into the act.
Michelle Wolf may have been listed as a comedian at Saturday's White House Correspondents Dinner, but no one is quite sure why. Her monologue, an abusive personal attack on the women of this administration, was spectacularly unfunny. And by the program's end, the only joke -- liberals agreed -- was that Wolf was ever invited in the first place.
After a string of especially vulgar lines, the Comedy Central contributor couldn't help but notice the uncomfortable silence that followed. "Yeah, you shoulda done more research before you got me to do this," she cracked. That was certainly the consensus on both sides of the political aisle after a performance so biting that some people got up and left. Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders took the brunt of the savagery, sitting quietly on the same stage as Wolf, listening as the woman at the podium derided everything from her character to her eye make-up.
"I love you as Aunt Lydia in 'The Handmaid's Tale,'" Wolf said, referring to an evil character on the show. "Every time Sarah steps up to the podium I get excited because I'm not real sure what we're going to get -- a press briefing, a bunch of lies or divided into softball teams. I really like Sarah, I think she's very resourceful. She burns facts, and then she uses that ash to create a perfect smoky eye. Maybe she's born with it... maybe it's lies." In an especially cringe-worthy moment, Wolf compared Sanders to Uncle Tom. "I'm never really sure what to call Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Is it Sarah Sanders, is it Sarah Huckabee Sanders? Is it Cousin Huckabee? Is it Auntie Huckabee Sanders? Like what's Uncle Tom for white women who disappoint other white women?"
And Sanders wasn't the only target. Wolf called the president's daughter, Ivanka, "as helpful to women as an empty box of tampons." She took on Kellyanne Conway, a key White House advisor, insisting she was an inveterate liar, and asked: "If a tree falls in the woods, how do we get Kellyanne under that tree?"
For the media, who's already in an uphill battle for Americans' trust, Saturday's dinner didn't exactly help matters. "If the #WHCD dinner did anything tonight, it made the chasm between journalists and those who don't believe us even wider," tweeted the AP's Meg Kinnard. MSNBC co-host of "Morning Joe," Mika Brzezinski, was one of the dozens of horrified Left-leaning reporters to come to Sarah's defense. "Watching a wife and mother be humiliated on national television for her looks is deplorable." She’s right. Not only was the profanity inappropriate for this kind of public forum, but the harassment of Sanders made more than a few of us wonder: what happened to all of those anti-bullying crusaders?
I'm not even going to mention how FRC and Perkins chose to omit the fact the Wolf went after both Democrats and Republicans and how she also had some zingers about the Washington media in general. I'm simply enthralled by how FRC attempts to create a scene of martyrdom with both Sanders and Ivanka Trump tied to the stake and Wolf leading the the press with lighted torches. Apparently in its attempt to recreate 'The Passion of Joan of Arc,' FRC failed to practice a little self evaluation. Isn't this the same organization which has made its name and gathered its coins by daily conjuring up a false image of the LGBTQ community as slobbering, child-snatching, Christian-hating sex maniacs,.This organization, right here, which now has the temerity to scold on vulgarity?