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Pimp My Chelsea!
By Bill | February 13, 2008 | Email This Post
Pimpin’ ain’t easy. Ice-T, among others, taught us that. But it’s particularly hard out there for a pimp if your product is the former First Daughter. You may have heard that MSNBC suspended reporter David Shuster for suggesting that the Clinton campaign had “pimped out” Chelsea in order to gain superdelegate votes for her mother. Clinton was so incensed that she personally wrote the president of NBC news to complain, and the network tripped all over itself to make amends. So far so good.
Then a few days later, we get this story about the 27-year-old (can she really be 27 already?) spending breakfast with a college-age superdelegate, lobbying for his vote. One can picture the scene, a doe-eyed Chelsea leaning over the sticky table (breakfast tables are always sticky on college campuses) spending the morning talking earnestly about her parents. You know the old saying, there are two things you don’t get at home, and one of them is Eggs Benedict.
The problem is the Clinton camp is once again seeking to separate perception from reality. Sure, the language used was distasteful, but the point remains: Hillary is using her daughter to secure votes, the same as she uses her husband. While the younger Ms. Clinton was a minor in the White House, the Clintons did an admirable job of making her off-limits to public criticism; that’s as it should have been. But a now-adult Chelsea has chosen to parlay her family connection into a crucial role in what may be the closest primary season in living memory, and that opens her to criticism. Particularly when that criticism is accurate.
Topics: Democrats, Hillary Clinton |