There's little I could think more absurd than insulting teenage girls for being dismissive about the literal absurdity of pardoning a turkey.
If there's anyone who needs to be treated with more respect, it's the President, who, in my mind, deserves respect by virtue of being the President of the United States, regardless of political affiliation, not the turkey. But you all knew that.
I was under the impression that "respect for authority", "common decency", "moral rectitude", and so forth were key elements of conservatism, the sort of conservatism that opposed Senators beating each other with sticks. Certainly, excluding the President's children from petty online snark would be the conservative thing to do, or at least that's what I would have thought.
The fact is that Sasha and Malia Obama have taken more flak from the Right for having the nerve to exist than Jenna and Barbara Bush ever did for their drunken antics that were arguably beneath the dignity of children of a public official and indisputably illegal. And it's a good thing poor Chelsea Clinton was a teenager in the pre-Internet era; Rush Limbaugh wouldn't leave her alone.
American conservatives don't respect authority or show decency toward anyone other than themselves. They didn't accept Bill Clinton as a legitimate leader. They think Barack Obama is even more illegitimate.
