WaPo Style Critic Gushes Over Kennedys - Hammers John Roberts' Family For Same Style

Change font size:  A |  A

It’s not just liberal policy and charismatic personalities that the liberal media find alluring about the Kennedy clan, but also its decidedly upper-crust fashion sense. In Sunday’s Washington Post, fashion reporter Robin Givhan waxed eloquent about the “look of rich tradition” the patrician Kennedy clan brought to their oft-publicly photographed wardrobe.

Yet four years ago, Givhan derided as “syrupy nostalgia” similar classic preppy sensibilities when then-Supreme Court nominee John Roberts and his family were in the limelight.

Our good friend Mary Katharine Ham at the Weekly Standard caught the Givhan double standard:

This week, the Pulitzer-winning critic waxes predictably poetic about the be-Dockered and deck-shoed style of the Kennedys, obviously nostalgic for the "look of rich tradition" and refinement embodied by the kids from Hyannisport. She bemoans the inability of the modern American politician to wear it without apology (or, rather, the American people's alleged inability to countenance a look of easy affluence).

She wasn't nearly as nostalgic in her pettiest of attacks, in 2005's "An image a little too carefully coordinated," which took aim at John Roberts, his wife, and his two knee-high children. What was their sin, you might ask? Flip-flops at the White House? Tony Hawk t-shirts and Ninja Turtle shorts? No, their transgression was apparently trying to achieve "refinement" without being Democrats. What was the look of rich tradition on the Kennedys became "syrupy nostalgia" on Roberts' family:

When President Bush announced his choice for the next associate justice of the Supreme Court, it was hard not to marvel at the 1950s-style tableau vivant that was John Roberts and his family.

You can read the entire glorious takedown of Givhan here at the Standard’s blog.    

For an archive of NewsBusters stories on Givhan’s bias, check here.