Chelsea Clinton is 37 years old — 19 years past the minimum voting age, 16 years over the legal age to drink, no longer entitled to reflexive press protection as the daughter of a Democratic President or presidential candidate, and thus eligible for ridicule when she deserves it — even if the establishment media's gatekeepers don't like it. I'd suggest that if you really have to ask, as Chelsea Clinton did, if a "Make America Great Again" hat seen on a rendering of Abe Lincoln on the cover of a Republican Party dinner program has been "photoshopped," you deserve every bit of the ridicule coming your way.
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What triggered this proud graduate of Stanford with a masters degree from Oxford, was something reporter Andrew Lofholm at WPTV in West Palm Beach, Florida tweeted from a Republican Lincoln Day Dinner:
Lofholm's report from the event, with accompanying video, is here.
An alarmed Chelsea Clinton tweeted the following (HT The Blaze):
This was too good for the snark brigade on Twitter to resist. Some good-natured comments, considering the circumstances (many others unfortunately not), have included the following (minor revisions made for punctuation, capitalization and spelling):
"No, this is the exact hat Lincoln was wearing when he signed the Emancipation Proclamation. People forget that."
"Nope, Lincoln was wearing that exact hat at the Theater."
"Nope, they found a picture of Lincoln wearing a MAGA hat from the nineteenth century. No photoshop needed."
"I remember this photo was taken at the 1856 Republican National Convention and is real."
"It's as real as those Bosnian snipers."
To her credit, Mrs. Clinton (or Ms., or Miss, based on reader input) hasn't deleted her tweet — yet. Though she doesn't seem to understand photo editing, she at least grasps the idea that the websites of Twitter curators like Twitchy will have her tweet as long as they exist.
Now imagine if either of former President George W. Bush's daughters, who are also in their mid-30s, had posted something this dumb on Twitter. Does anyone believe that the establishment press, or especially the left-leaning cadre of late-night comedians, would be able to resist engaging in intense mockery? The heavy bets here should be placed on both groups pretending not to know anything about Chelsea Clinton's latest Twitter calamity, even though the press has gone out of its way to fawn over her supposedly aggressive and effective tweeting to this point (spare me), even though she's especially fair game for ridicule because of her rumored political ambitions.
Keep this episode in mind the next time some op-ed writer like Ann Friedman at the Los Angeles Times pathetically laments how "Just like her mother, Chelsea Clinton never gets a break." Just like her mother did by committing more unforced errors than anyone can hope to count, the Mrs. Clinton the younger (as I would prefer to call her is damaging herself without anyone's help.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
