Why Not Have Two Standards Instead of Just One?

This week two rude and vulgar women in show business made two rude and vulgar remarks. There is nothing unusual or interesting about that. However the  consequences each suffered are interesting for what they say about the media in this country.  Roseanne Barr  tweeted likening Valerie Jarrett to an offspring of a union between Planet of the Apes and the Muslim Brotherhood.  Samantha Bee called Ivanka Trump a feckless cunt on her TV show and suggested an incestuous interest or relationship between her and her father the president.  Barr was not only fired. Her show and everybody working on it got the ax. Her actions were big news for several days.  Bee was scarcely noticed and got off with making  a weasely so-called apology that backed off the “cunt” but said nothing about the suggested incest.

Leftists and their followers in the traditional media are denying that this illustrates a double standard by claiming that what Barr did was far worse.  That is nonsense.  In the first place Jarrett is a  long time and big time political player in Washing ton and  the Democratic Party. She was an important official in Obama’s administration who was said to have power and influence well beyond her official duties. She is a  rough and tumble contestant  in the political arena and has been for years.  Ivanka Trump, though she is more involved in the administration than some other presidents’ children, is mainly a civilian whose activities  are focused on philanthropic concerns. She is not in the arena. Besides,  presidents’ children traditionally have been treated as being off limits for  political obloquy. (A poor congressional staffer was fired for making a mildly critical remark about the way one of Obama’s kids was dressed and behaving.)

 As to the remarks themselves, one likened a black woman to simians, and the other suggested the President of the United States had the incestuous hots for his daughter.  It would be  hard to choose between them for rudeness and vulgarity, but the remarks themselves were not decisive.  If Bee had called Secretary Carson Trump’s organ grinder monkey, and Barr had called Chelsea Clinton a cunt and suggested that she slip into a blue dress and titillate and  entice her father to support Trump’s policies on trade, the results likely would have been about the same.  Bee probably still would have skated, and Barr probably still would have gotten the worse of it. It is not what was said, but what side each of the women was seen as being on that mattered.  Some animals clearly are more equal than others.