Glenn Beck's Attack on President's Daughter Nothing New

Well, if you have been paying attention in the last month, you will recall that a large oil spill is growing larger by the day in the Gulf of Mexico. This past week, President Obama made another of his wonderful speeches in which he continued to claim responsibility for the spill not getting cleaned up faster. Claiming such responsibility is not necessarily the greatest idea if you want to be re-elected, but it is clear that he is trying to do something, anything that he can personally do to placate the American people. During the speech, he made a comment about how his 11 year old daughter, Malia, had asked him, "Daddy, did you plug the hole yet?" It was meant to be a somewhat cutesy anecdote to tell the American people that even among his own family, he was claiming responsibility for what happened in the Gulf.

On Wednesday of that week, Glenn Beck, during an interview with Sarah Palin, had stated that the families of politicians were off limits. The day after the speech, just two days later, he performed an apparently off-the-cuff skit with his co-host, Pat Gray, in which they mock the girl, asking about her "level of education." People on the political left are somewhat up-in-arms. Later that day, Beck apologized for his skit on his web site, though he made a comment at the beginning of the apology about the President using children "to shield himself from criticism."

It is rather interesting, though, that individuals on both sides of the political debate have, justly and unjustly, attacked members of political families. Chelsea Clinton was allegedly referred to as the White House dog on Rush Limbaugh's short-lived television show, according to an article in Mother Jones from May/June of 1995. A few moonbats (the liberal equivalent of wingnuts) had even theorized at one point that her youngest son, Trig, was actually her grandson. I point this out to show that there are crazy attacks on both sides of the aisle, and that family is never really considered off limits.

Sometimes, a so-called attack on a family member can make sense. In the case of Bristol Palin, it was not an attempt at a personal attack, but instead an attack on the policy of supporting abstinence-only education. However, to say that attacks on political families are an occurrence in equal measure from both Democratic and Republican commentators would be a severe misstatement

John Ziegler, speaking to Bill Cunningham on his radio program on April 12, 2009, made an offhand comment about how viciously the media would be attacked if they made comments about the sex lives of the Obama girls. To be fair, he was talking about the liberal comments on the subject of Palin's abstinence-only stance and her daughter's pregnancy, but let's stop and think for a second about the fact that he mentioned the idea of sex lives for girls who are far, FAR below the legal age of consent. This is perhaps the second most offensive and vile attack on a family member of a politician that may have been made in the last ten years, but there was one, very famous example of an attack on a former government official's family that can be universally considered vile and unacceptable.

In 2003, Joseph Wilson wrote an op-ed published in the New York Times in which he said that George W. Bush had mislead the American people on the evidence of possible nuclear materials in Iraq as the impetus for invasion. Eight days later, the late Robert Novak wrote in a column for The Washington Post that Valerie Plame, Wilson's wife, was a CIA operative involved in preventing proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. To this day, the full extent of the involvement of Bush Administration officials in this leak is not understood, but even if it were Novak acting entirely alone, this was a completely unacceptable attack, basically destroying a woman's career because you didn't agree with her husband's opinion. And again, even if it was a coincidence that Novak decided to reveal this information days after Wilson's op-ed, it was a former official's family, and an undercover agent who was involved in preventing catastrophe.

Honestly, compared to what happened to Valerie Plame, Beck's skit looks more benign by the second.

Sources:
Daniel Tencer, "Glenn Beck attacks Obama daughter over oil spill worries", The Raw Story
Glenn Beck, "Statement from Glenn", Glenn Beck Program
Molly Ives, "Lyin' Bully", Mother Jones
John Ziegler on The Bill Cunningham Show, 4/12/09 Hour 3
Joseph Wilson, "What I Didn't Find in Africa", New York Times
Robert Novak, "Mission to Niger", The Washington Post