Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse ...

Six minutes must seem like an eternity in front of the camera, especially listening to your father crack bad jokes. Any normal person could pardon the President's daughters for fidgeting and rolling their eyes while waiting for their father to finish this traditional executive order, but not Elizabeth Lauten, who used the opportunity to launch a screed on bad parenting.

Ms. Lauten has since retracted her facebook post and issued an apology. Not that it did her any good after this major breach of protocol. The President's family is regarded as off limits (just ask John McCain) except for the gentle barb here and there. Elizabeth went so far over the line in her critique, that she was called out by fellow conservatives and most likely will lose her job, as I doubt Rep. Stephen Fincher of Tennessee will want this kind of publicity. She serves as his communications director.

She was quick to make her facebook page private but you can still find her resume on LinkedIn, noting her impressive ACT and SAT scores, knowledge of Latin and Ancient Greek, as well as numerous organizations she is part of, including the Daughters of the American Revolution. You really have to wonder how such a smart woman could make such a stupid comment?

Most of her contempt was directed at Obama. The girls were no more than a convenient foil for her disgust with the President and First Lady. Picking on the girls' short dresses and apparent lack of attention (in her mind anyway) point to bad parenting skills, which she readily pointed out. Elizabeth believes that President Obama has not only failed the country but his children as well.

She tried to distance herself from this politically motivated attack in her apology, but it too fell short of the mark, as Elisa Doucette points out.

Ms. Lauten hasn't been the first to attack President Obama's family. Conservatives have long regarded Michelle Obama as fair game, particularly her fight for better school lunches. Like the President's legislation, conservatives have gone out of their way to defeat any legislation that would offer better nutritional standards for school lunches, which Michelle has advocated since coming to the White House, not to mention attack her personally.

Even the daughters have come under right wing criticism for having a secret service detail. If you dare, you can find much worse things said in the extreme right wing blogosphere, where anything related to Obama is under constant derision, not least of all his family.

I suppose Elizabeth Lauten wanted to hurt Obama in the wake of executive orders regarding immigration and global warming that have Republicans once again clamoring about impeachment. Since the President appears oblivious to these rants, she goes after his daughters, much like the NRA did when Obama announced he was issuing executive orders in regard to gun control. In the end, she only hurt herself. Not that anyone will feel sorry for her.

PS: The RNC apparently feels sorry for Lauten. Sean Spicer, the Republican communications director, feels that Elizabeth Lauten is the real victim here, not Sasha and Malia, considering it a "partisan attack" on the part of the "mainstream media" to focus so heavily on Lauten's comments. She has since resigned as Fincher's communications director, and will no doubt take her case to Fox News.

Dylan in America

Whoever it was in 1969 who named the very first Bob Dylan bootleg album “Great White Wonder” may have had a mischievous streak. There are any number of ways you can interpret the title — most boringly, the cover was blank, like the Beatles’ “White Album” — but I like to see a sly allusion to “Moby-Dick.” In the seven years since the release of his first commercial record, Dylan had become the white whale of 20th-century popular song, a wild, unconquerable and often baffling force of musical nature who drove fans and critics Ahab-mad in their efforts to spear him, lash him to the hull and render him merely comprehensible. --- Bruce Handy, NYTimes ____________________________________________ I figured we can start fresh with Bob Dylan. Couldn't resist this photo of him striking a Woody Guthrie pose. Looks like only yesterday. Here is a link to the comments building up to this reading group.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro

Team of Rivals Reading Group

''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005

Dispatches from Vilnius

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