Laura would never say such things

Double-flowering tulip in our "parterre" garden lifts its skirts to show a little ankle.  'Reminds us a bit of Laura Bush's naughty-but-nice performance at the White House Correspondents Dinner the other night.

"Most of Mrs. Bush's humor at the correspondents' dinner was just right: Edgy but not over the edge. But I think the stripper and horse jokes were totally beneath her," writes Michelle Malkin, perhaps missing the point:

Just put it to the other-shoe test: If it were Teresa Heinz Kerry standing up on the dais telling the same jokes, the conservative commentariat would be buzzing for the rest of the year about what a tasteless skank she is.

We don't think so. Michelle's other-shoe test doesn't work because humor depends upon the unexpected. Teresa HK is well known among the conservative commentariat as a skank.  She can be counted on to go over the edge early and often, while the elegant Laura B would never say such things in public. But she did say them. The point -- as we blogged here the other day -- was to disarm her husband's MSM enemies before they knew what hit them. Her comic timing was superb, the words "spoke" to the assembled audience of self-regarding elite media and Hollywood types, and her performance was rewarded by kudos and top billing throughout the news cycles next day. Mission accomplished!

Comments

[Laurence Simon]

Laura's monologue at the Correspondent's Dinner was scripted and deliberately out-of-demure-character. This is not the kind of thing you'd expect to hear if you were some ordinary visitor sitting down to casual football-and-pretzels.

On the other hand, TeRAYsuh's off-color comments were often made when she wasn't reading from a prepared script, not speaking before a traditionally semi-private function, and were quite often examples of her true character peeking out from the public facade.

[Teresa]

Here's the thing about these comments... not only were they spoken in front of an adult crowd - but they were cleverly phrased in such a way that children wouldn't have the least idea what she was talking about.

The double entendre is a device that has been used in humor, since its creation. If it's done well - it's very funny. Laura Bush did an excellent job and it was very funny.

I'm sorry that there are so many people who seem to be having a problem with it. It makes me wonder if they find anything funny at all or if they just never laugh? I love Michelle Malkin, but sometimes I just want her to lighten up a bit. You'd almost think Mrs. Bush had done a strip-tease on the stage instead of some very mildly risque humor.

[Doyle]

Laura's 'horse joke' was worse than you think because with some of the reactions to it, I imagine she's still laughing.

Remember, she'd prefaced it with the comment that what would someone who'd gone to school at Andover and Yale know about ranching? Dubya tried to milk a horse . . . yadda.

The best part of the joke is now watching the reaction from some who are trying to turn it into what it wasn't and never was: racy and / or edgy.

The same joke was applied to me good naturedly over twenty year ago by some of the people I'd moved in among, when they introduced me -- the "Yankee" now living in their midst -- to others.

It's an old joke. Very old. That some are trying to turn Laura's 'horse joke' into something it isn't and never was . . . well, dang.

It says more about them than the person who told it.

[M. Simon]

It is very likely that the vast majority of the folks offended by Lauras jokes were a bunch of homos.

Homo sapiens that is. The rest were some version of monkey.