Dear media: This Elizabeth Lauten nonsense is why everyone hates you

Terrence McCoy wrote “One too many opinions from Hill staffer Elizabeth Lauten, who attacked Obama’s daughters and resigned,” a thorough digging up of dirt from her high school and college years. She had opinions on Darfur and Saddam Hussein, y’all.

Yes, the Washington Post had a reporter dig up dirt on a low-level former staffer who dared to criticize the presidential family. Is this real life?

I’d like someone to go ahead and circle back with Baron and have him explain himself. In what world — in what mother-freaking world — does he justify taking a foreign affairs reporter and having him dig up dirt on a low-level former staffer who said nothing worse about presidential children than the Post’s own columnists did in the Bush era? One of the items linked above is a Ruth Marcus column where she bashes this low-level staffer for critiquing the daughters, then notes she herself did it to the Bush girls –including attacking them for showing so much “cleavage”, being churlish, and their speaking style — but that it was OK because she did it under the guise of parody and they had notable busts. I’m not joking. You can read it for yourself. As John Podhoretz said, “Ruth Marcus’s double standard FOR HERSELF is absolutely astonishing.”