It's clear that GQ.com isn't at all interested in consistency, and that it doesn't care if it gets caught employing a blatant double standard. Catching them at it was just too easy.
In the wake of the latest reported incident involving President Barack Obama's 18 year-old daughter Malia — she has been photographed while playing the drinking game Pong in Maryland, a state where, as in the rest of the country, the legal drinking age is 21 — GQ writer Jay Willis has demanded that the press "Stop Snitching on Malia Obama, Y'All" (an ironic headline given the primary object of his wrath is the UK Daily Mail, where "y'all" is not exactly a commonly heard contraction). In 2005, GQ.com, in what appears to have been a house editorial, was still going after George W. Bush's daughters, while referring back to their 2001 citations for underage drinking.
Here's some of Willis's 2016 whining, following a picture caption at the top of the web page which reads, "FREE MALIA!":
Stop Snitching on Malia Obama, Y'all
Sure, President Obama may be the family's sole Nobel Prize recipient. But after spending her entire adolescence living in the White House—seriously, your blood pressure should have risen slightly just thinking about that terrifying prospect—eighteen-year-old Malia Obama, newly minted member of the Harvard Class of 2021, deserves some shine, too. But does she get that shine? No, she does not. She gets snitches instead.
This week, a bunch of narcs caught Malia ... well, we'll let the Daily Mail explain:
The 18-year-old first daughter, dressed in a midriff-baring baseball tee and pair of cut off jean shorts, looks directly at a fellow partygoer's phone in the photograph, which was later uploaded to the social app Snapchat.
... There are also cans of Natural Light, Bud Light and Miller Lite on the table, which is decorated with red, white and blue confetti.
... And this isn't the first time Malia's been shamed for acting like every teen ever, in the history of teenage-dom. Last fall, the then-high-school senior had the audacity to hang out with some very friendly-looking people on a tour of Brown, only to be surreptitiously photographed "playing—or at least standing close to—a table filled with red Solo cups."
It got worse this summer, when one or more petty, small concertgoers inexplicably decided to stop minding their own damn business and instead filmed Malia dancing at a music festival and, later, smoking an unidentified substance that may or may not be one that is permitted in certain cooler states, but prohibited under federal law.
... This injustice can stand no longer. If you happen to see a certain famous first daughter at a party this weekend, or any weekend, put your phone away. Even in these angry, divisive, troubling times, surely we as a nation can unite behind a single, noble, unifying purpose: let Malia Obama live.
GQ.com certainly wasn't interested in just letting the Bush daughters "live" in June of 2005, and of course took gratuitous shots at their father in the process (typos and misspellings deliberately kept in to show how sloppy the work was):
Dear Barbara and Jenna,
We're wondering Do you worry that Dad's idea to implement a progressive price index to reduce the cost of Social Security will hurt longterm benefits for working Americans Just kidding! Who wants another shot of Goldschlýger Whooohooo!
You guys sure were fun when your daddy took office. Finally America had first daughters who could do a respectable keg stand.
The comedy began when you both got busted for underage drinking. Then, Barbara, rumor has it you slinked into a naked party at Yale. Jenna, you faceplanted at a frat bash and wound up in The National Enquirer. That was awesome!
But we have to admit, as you've gotten older, those antics have worn thin. Consider that speech you guys gave at the Republican National Convention. We didn't expect FDR's "Four Freedoms," but who wrote that thing Bijou Phillips This was a convention speech—it sounded like it was written in the bathroom of the Hustler Club. And by the way, when are you two going to get jobs As we're writing this, neither of you has one.
We know the bar is low; Daddy didn't start waking up before noon until he was 40.
But as far as presidential spawn are concerned, you're starting to look bad. That Jan Bradyesque striver Chelsea Clinton She went to Oord, got a siigure consulting job, and has already formed a political action committee for her 2024 presidential bid. Even Ron Reagan is building a respectable career as a talking head. And Amy Carter still makes the best hemp bracelets east of the Mississippi.
... Sincerely,
GQ
"Oord" is supposed to be "Oxford."
This 2005 item was apparently seen as funny in certain quarters. All I see is juvenile taunting by one or more hypocritical jerks.
As to the Bush daughters:
- Jenna Bush, now Jenna Bush Hager, "is an American teacher, author and journalist." She "Jenna Bush graduated from UT Austin with a degree in English in 2004." She worked as a teacher's aide at a DC public school. She worked "at a shelter as part of an internship for UNICEF's Educational Policy Department in Latin America, specifically in Panama." She is currently "a part-time reading coordinator at the SEED Public Charter School in Baltimore, Maryland, and contributes a monthly news story about education for the Today show." In November 2012, she became editor-at-large of Southern Living magazine. She has two children.
- Barbara Bush graduated from Yale in 2004. She then began "working with AIDS patients in Africa, in Tanzania, South Africa, and Botswana, among other places, through a program sponsored by the Houston-based Baylor College of Medicine's International Pediatrics AIDS Initiative." She "is the co-founder and president of a public health-focused nonprofit, Global Health Corps," which "provides opportunities for young professionals from diverse backgrounds to work on the front lines of the fight for global health equity"
Malia Obama's list of accomplishments is pending.
As to leaving Malia alone, perhaps the press should be showing more restraint, but Malia Obama should be smart enough in today's social media age to know that her public missteps are subject to being captured.
The idea that someone from GQ is lecturing the press about reporting her antics, after how that same publication obsessed over George W. Bush's daughters, is a sick joke. It's a perfect example of what the Media Research Center's Brent Bozell and Tim Graham asserted in an August 20 column: "A presidential child of Democratic parents is untouchable, but if it’s the offspring of Republicans, he -- or even better, she – is fair game. It’s open season."
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
