The Left is on a jihad to teach us differently, but Senator Ted Cruz, like most politicians, understands that most Americans approve of traditional family values and like to see them reflected in the people they elect to office. This is common sense on their part - a man or woman with a family to protect and care for has a stake in society and his or her decisions are going to reflect that.
If the family is photogenic, that's also a plus. And as anyone who's ever run for office will tell you, running for office is a time consuming, demanding enterprise. And having the spouse and kids along when possible gives the family a little more time to spend together.
So Ted Cruz decided to have some fun with his family doing a commercial with a Christmas theme. It's political of course, but in a lighthearted and witty way modeled on the old Saturday Night Live faux commercials. Anyone with a sense of humor should be able to appreciate it, even if you disagree with Senator Cruz's positions:
That when Washington Post editorial cartoonist Ann Telnaes decided to attack Cruz's five and seven year old daughters, depicting them in a racist cartoon as mindless dancing monkeys, with Senator Ted Cruz as the organ grinder. You can see this on twitter in a gif she created here. (this gutless creep subsequently has removed that as well)
Her excuse for this viciousness was that if they were 'props' in the ad, they were 'fair game.'
Oh really? I wonder what the reaction would be if a major outlet like the Washington Post used that logic to depict the kids in this political ad as monkeys? Malia and Sasha appear about twenty minutes in:
Or how about the quaint little family group pictured in this political ad below?
After a major outcry, Washington Post editor Fred Hiatt removed the cartoon and Ann Telnaes' lame explanation with this comment :
Editor’s note from Fred Hiatt: It’s generally been the policy of our editorial section to leave children out of it. I failed to look at this cartoon before it was published. I understand why Ann thought an exception to the policy was warranted in this case, but I do not agree.He 'failed to look at it?' He's supposedly the editor and he just let this go through without even taking the ten seconds it would take to glance at it and see this for what it was? I'd certainly like to give him the benefit of the doubt, but given the Washington Post's default ideological position, it's not easy. Especially since the Left has always crossed that line, with some honorable exceptions. Just ask the Palin kids or the Bush twins.
And there's also the fact that this is blatant racism, since Cruz and his children have Cuban ancestry. Would a cartoon of Obama's daughters as monkeys have ever gotten by the WAPO's editors? And if it had, can you imagine the headlines, and perhaps even the racial violence in response? Hiatt and Telnaes would be fortunate merely to be fired and allowed to leave town in one piece. Needless to say, since its Ted Cruz and he has an 'R' after his name, they'll merely remove the cartoon, issue a lame response that isn't even decent enough to be an apology and perhaps just chuckle among themselves about it in private.
Ted Cruz was his usual classy self in response, of course :
Actually.. they are indeed out of her league, not that it's a very high bar. Their father and mother have obviously raised them with a sense of decency, of right and wrong. Ms. Telnaes obviously never had the benefit of that sort of thing.
Unfortunately, she's just the first one out of the box. Rest assured that if Ted Cruz's star continues to rise, you're going to see a lot more of this.
