Laura "Leno" Bush

I'm a prude and a liberal democrat; I will admit that to anyone. How do you ask can a "modest," woman who is a self pro-claimed prude be a liberal? I guess my answer to that would be that although I have a conservative outlook on those things I consider risqué or ribald, I have never felt the need to censor because of my beliefs. I may leave the room when my husband and children are watching the “Blue Collar Guys”, but I wouldn't want to take these shows off TV just because they may offend me. There is no way in "heck" I would watch or listen to Howard Stern or subscribe to anything Larry Flynt might publish but I would fight to my death for the right of these people to publish or talk about any subject they so choose in defense of our first amendment right to do so. I say do what I do when I am offended by some picture, words or movies, turn it off, change the channel or leave the room, don't take away the rights of others to watch, read or look at things you may not like.

But I have to say that that in watching the White House Correspondent's Dinner on C-Span Saturday, I was floored by our First Lady and her risqué comedy routine.
In an administration that has tried to censor TV, Movies, radio, I was more than a little shocked by a "First Lady" who described her husband's hand-job on a horse. While I have to admit she could probably get a second career as a stand-up comic, the unease I felt watching her risqué routine while young men and women were being killed and maimed in Iraq, possibly as she was speaking, left me a little queasy.
It is very hard to laugh at bawdy jokes about naked men at Chippendale’s when our young military are being asked to defend the indefensible in Iraq. It is unimaginable to me that Eleanor Roosevelt joked about being a "Desperate Housewife" while young men were dying in Europe to defend our country. I guess if times were good I would have just figured "Que Cera Cera," and left the room as I would normally do, but times are not good, we have almost 1600 dead in Iraq and over 11,000 mortally wounded in a war that only George W. Bush knows what they are fighting for.

David Corn in the "Nation “ opines: "Laura's racy act was the talk of the town. But there was something more strange and discomforting about the evening than her channeling of Ellen DeGeneres. Neither she nor her husband once referred to the Americans serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, particularly those who had recently lost their lives implementing Bush's policy and (according to the Bushes) defending the United States from evil. At a high-profile event of this nature, it certainly is customary for a president to joke, but he also often concludes with a serious sentiment."

Call me cynical but I just have to wonder if these same jokes came out of the mouth of Hillary Clinton during a time of war if there wouldn’t have been some outrage from the right?