Wow.
Via WaPo:
In keeping with the Christian theme of her self-serving apology, Elizabeth Lauten has blessedly resigned from her post as the communications director for Rep. Stephen Lee Fincher (R-Tenn.). She had said prayer showed her the error of her ways, though one would think she would not need a higher power to tell her that trashing Malia and Sasha Obama for dress and demeanor at a turkey pardoning was not the best idea.
But tucked into the usual partisan sniping of her original Facebook comments and expected swipes at President Obama and Michelle Obama through their children was something deeply disturbing and unsettling. Her rant against the girls read, “Dress like you deserve respect, not a spot at the bar.” Let that sink in. She placed two children ages 13 and 16 in a bar, a very adult setting – a place where you can drink, flirt and, in some cities, smoke.
That’s not frivolous, but insidious. And it’s nothing new. Lauten’s mind traveled back to a disgusting place and time, when black women were disrespected, denied a spot on the pedestal of virtue white women occupied. Those views – apparently alive and well – excused the abuse and disregard of human beings judged not worthy of respect or consideration by people who prayed as hard as Lauten says she does. […]
Now that Lauten has some free time, she might visit the statue of Rosa Parks in the U.S. Capitol’s Statuary Hall. Parks is, of course, most known for refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Ala., bus in 1955, an act that sparked a movement.
But years before, she was an NAACP activist, who formed the Committee for Equal Justice and traveled throughout the South to seek justice for black women and young girls raped and traumatized but unable to get justice from all-white juries because of societal myths about their morals, myths that took shape in the words Lauten so thoughtlessly used to label two children when she denied them respect and made them bar-hoppers.