As Twitchy reported, Politico let go of contributor Julia Ioffe on her way out the door to a new gig at The Atlantic over a vulgar tweet targeting Ivanka Trump. Ioffe deleted the tweet and apologized, but plenty of her fellow journalists lined up behind her in support.
MSNBC’s Christopher Hayes, for one, expressed his amazement that everyone was “gonna get the vapors because of a single tweet” — kind of like every member of the mainstream media has done over every one of Donald Trump’s tweets.
Some were happy to remind Hayes of the name Elizabeth Lauten. An aide to Tennessee congressman Stephen Fincher, she was made famous in 2014 when she criticized the Obama daughters’ appearance at a White House event. “Dress like you deserve respect, not a spot at a bar,” she wrote.
She too apologized, but as Federalist senior editor Mollie Hemingway notes, Lauten forgot that the rule about the president’s children being off limits was still in effect at the time.
Here are just SOME of the headlines the WPost put out in 4 days after a low-level Hill staffer mildly criticized the Obama family. pic.twitter.com/I7Oaomnmvc
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) December 15, 2016
.@disorderly1 They also had a “foreign affairs” reporter DIG INTO HER JUVIE RECORD. I am not making this up. https://t.co/pnUE84oeIH
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) December 15, 2016
But …
Were they adults in their 30s stretching the limits of conflict of interest and anti-nepotism laws? No. They were not. https://t.co/cIzf21KRmc
— Bradley P. Moss (@BradMossEsq) December 15, 2016
No. Then again, a low-level Hill staffer critiquing fashion is not a national political journalist accusing the family of incest. https://t.co/5Fv9uU6c1i
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) December 15, 2016
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Since Iofee’s dropping of the F-bomb in her original tweet made it pretty clear she was doing more than hinting at a purely metaphorical “incestuous” White House arrangement, it’s OK to stop pretending it was anything but the cheapest of cheap shots. Was her tweet truly an expression of concern over a conflict of interest? No. It was not.
https://twitter.com/WillEvans215/status/809227682244415489
We’re so old we remember there being standards associated with being a grown-up journalist, too.
To be clear, this different standard you seek is that it’s fine to accuse children of opponents of committing incest with their father. https://t.co/0i9YDDwu06
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) December 15, 2016
It might be hard for some to imagine, but a lot of Americans aren’t going to sit quietly while members of the press push each other to sets their own standard even lower.
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