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EDITOR OF REDSTATE

Ashley Biden is a Cokehead. So was Barack Obama. Big Deal

By: Erick Erickson (Diary)  |  March 31st, 2009 at 12:43 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

By now you’ve all heard that Ashley Biden is a cokehead . . . or at least was caught on video snorting coke. Just like Barack Obama.

In the process of writing about the Vice President’s daughter, the media just can’t help drag Barbara and Jenna Bush into this or Bristol Palin.

Let’s catch up:

Barbara and Jenna were underage drinkers. Their father allegedly snorted cocaine, but there has neither been a videotape nor an admission of such actions — that hasn’t kept the left/media from speculating.

The bottom line, though, is this: Ashley Biden is a private citizen. As are Barbara and Jenna Bush. As is Bristol Palin.

The fixation on this and those stories says more about the media than it does about the individuals, who I’m sure have problems of one sort or another shared by many, many Americans.

What is more troubling is how the media has sought to use the Ashley Biden story to transition back into Palin bashing and Bush bashing, none of whom are on the national stage anymore.

If the media wants to use the “everybody does it” story line they love, perhaps they should instead focus on Barack Obama, who admits to snorting coke.

But more preferably, perhaps the media should drop it altogether. Ashley Biden never asked to be in the national spotlight. Neither did Barbara nor Jenna Bush. Neither did Bristol Palin whose exposure on the national stage was probably more brutal than the treatment of any of the others I’ve mentioned and is still ongoing.

It is a tragedy, but not a national tragedy. The media would have us believe it is a national tragedy, but only to sell more ads, sell more papers, and trash George Bush and Sarah Palin some more — cowardly using their children as proxies.

But let me take this opportunity to remind you of one important thing the media prefers not to talk about: for all the accusations without evidence against George Bush, we know for certain Barack Obama snorted coke. Just like Joe Biden’s daughter.

Do we really want to turn this into a big story?

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COMMENTS

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  • George Neitz

    The hue and cry from these low life SOB’S if one of their children or spouses were dragged out in front of the public to be berated and belittled for the smallest of infractions. The howling would be unimaginable, of course we (conservatives) would never do it because we are not wired that way. I can forsee how the “free press” would immediately begin a war of total destruction against any group or individual that even dared to do so.

  • http://deafconservative.wordpress.com Cheetah772

    My bad! I’m going on a diet, I mean a diet of Diet Coke, hehe, get it? No? Okay, it’s a bad joke….

  • http://franklinslocke.blogspot.com/ franklinslocke

    I don?t want this all over the media. It really isn?t any of our business and I hope she gets the help she needs. BUT, the fact still is, if she was a Republican it would be all over the media and the double standard is still infuriating

    http://franklinslocke.blogspot.com/

  • IJB

    If that makes me a “bad” person, so be it.

    But what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Fight fire with fire.

    And if the other side doesn’t like it, maybe they’ll stop doing it to ours. But, if not, we should do everything to make their lives as unpleasant as possible.

  • HaroldHutchison

    I don’t see any alternative. If decency is not able to keep them from dragging the Bushes, Cheneys, and Palins through the mud, then perhaps a credible threat of retaliation will.

  • thetexan

    Playing fair didn’t fair well for Bush Sr nor McCain.

  • kat

    that the VP’s daughter is a cokehead (although if you read RadarOnline, she was set up – yeah, they made her snort it), but what this young lady does for a living. She is a social worker, employed by the state of Delaware to help troubled youth. Am I the only one that sees a problem with this?

    And I agree with you Texan – playing fair doesn’t work for us anymore. Do I want to go dirty, heck no, but sometimes you have to fight fire with fire. If we let this slide it won’t make the left stop digging up every piece of dirt on children of Republican politicians – it will only encourage to dig farther. I learned that lesson on the playground. Let the bully keep bullying you, it won’t ever stop. Stand your ground, the bully will find someone else to humiliate.

  • http://web.mac.com/mayo99/iWeb/Site/VladBlog/VladBlog.html Vladimir

    …we can conclude that GWB was (and probably is) a cokehead, because so many little people think he is.

    And, because there’s no videotape, Obama never used coke; his admission is just a clever misdirection on his part to throw us right wing nuts off the track.

    Is that about it?

    Note: no mention was made of the Holocaust in the making of this snark.

  • http://deafconservative.wordpress.com Cheetah772

    Because by admitting that he snorted coke, it made everybody think he’s so uber-cool and just like everybody else, when in fact, he’s an empty suit just like all other liberal Democrats.

    Okay, that was probably a lame joke, but what do I know….

  • aesthete

    Attacking a politician is alright, but I draw the line at family, unless said family actively involves itself in politics a la HRC. At any rate, attacking a pol’s family isn’t particularly effective politicking, and turns people off–just look at what happened to the Bristol Palin story.

  • kat

    other than Republicans?

  • FJG

    As a general rule of thumb, I say keep the kids out of the media up until they graduate college and are gainfully employed. So I don’t have any pity for her being attacked by anyone in the media for a few reasons:

    1.Ms. Biden is 27 yrs old. She is not a minor or even still in college. She is a grown adult and responsible for herself and her actions. She has a job and is not dependant upon her parents. If you are an independent adult and you are caught doing something illegal, it is fair game. And by the age of 27, she should be mature enough to realize that when you are a family member of a politician you are a news target. Especially when you are doing something illegal.

    2. To state the obvious, what Ms. Biden did was illegal! And when you get caught, it usually leads to arrest, possible jail time and losing your job. Underage pregnancy is not illegal and underage drinking is a minor offense that doesn?t land you in jail for a few years. The Bush twins and Ms. Palin accepted responsibility for their actions. Ms. Biden is merely ignoring it and she most likely will face no consequences. But nobody, even Ms. Biden, should be above the law.

    3. It seems Ms. Biden has a record of arrests: obstructing a police officer, marijuana, and drunk driving. This isn?t new or abnormal behavior.

    4. Ms. Biden is employed as a social worker. You know, the people who take kids away from their parents if the parents are using drugs. She also sits on the board of the YWCA, which is supposed to promote healthy living as one of it’s ideals. ( I would ask how she got the job with her arrest record but seeing as how she is a DE state employee and Daddy is one of the senators, I already know the answer.) Regardless, a social worker being busted for doing drugs would make the local news in most average size towns. It might even make the evening news in a large city if the person was related to a local politician. It is too hypocritical to ignore.

    I?m from Memphis. When the county mayor?s underage son was arrested for a DUI it was on the evening news. I?ve lost count of the number of times a Ford family member (or one of their many mistresses) landed on the evening news for drug abuse, domestic abuse, DUIs, misuse of taxpayer money, etc. Sadly the Ford family is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the countless scandals and illegal activities committed by corrupt politicians and their family members that have been splashed all over the local news mediums.

    My uncle was a Republican official in Memphis. My sister and I grew up with the knowledge that if we did something illegal there was a distinct possibility that it would be splashed all over the local papers and evening news. You can argue that it wasn?t fair, but we had no excuse to be doing anything illegal anyway. You may not ask for or like a family member serving as an elected official but that isn?t your choice as the family member. Your choice is to avoid trouble or risk getting caught knowing that it may become an embarrassing media scandal. So I have no sympathy for Ms. Biden. None.

    I feel sorry for the Bush Twins and Ms. Palin because they were still dependent upon their parents and having to learn some life lesson the hard way. The good Lord knows I, and my friends, had to learn similar lessons the hard way at that age. It is beyond shameful how the left and the media attacked these young women.

    And I agree that Obama’s involvement with crack (the use, alleged selling of, etc.) should have been brought up, exposed and discussed at a national level, not swept under a rug like all of his other countless faults.

    So in answer to the question… Yes, I want this to be a big story and I want Obama’s shady and drug filled past to be an even bigger story!

  • McKinley

    What is interesting is not that Ashley Biden did/did not do cocaine, but that she is not an anomaly but one of several children of prominent political figures who have trangressed social norms their parents are ostensibly dedicated to upholding.

    Contextualizing an event is a standard and useful journalistic practice and I see no nefarious liberal cabal here.

    Does it seem the families and private lives of conservatives are more thoroughly investigated than the left’s? Maybe, anecodetely, although I’m not sure how this could be proven outside of conjecture. I imagine a quantitative study of media bias in this realm could only yield spurious findings as one would have a hard time accessing the number of stories that go unreported.

    Conservatives are probably more likely to be found explicitly guilty of hypocrisy than liberals on these vices in the youtube era. – Ritter and Craig come to mind – and it is this type of conflict that the media is systematically more likely to report with no concern for partisan labels.

  • kat

    n/t

  • http://moelane.com/ Moe Lane

    NT

  • McKinley

    N/T

  • Martin Knight

    … it’s not really “hypocritical” when they slip up, is it? I mean; if a Democratic politician is caught with his hand in the cookie jar, in another man’s wife or a man/woman not his wife, he is not being a hypocrite – after all, as a Democrat he’s not expected to forgo his vices.

    It’s not a very good reason for the media to ignore Democratic scandals and misbehavior (or routinely fail to note that Senator or Congressman X is a Democrat if they do report it), but it’s at least somewhat … logical.

    Thanks for clearing that up.

  • Martin Knight

    I mean, about a decade or so ago, the guy was seeing prostitutes. Then, somehow, his conscience caught up to him (long before the Press) and he ‘fessed up to his wife, his priest, went into counseling and it would appear, has been on the straight and narrow ever since.

    Where’s the hypocrisy here?

  • HaroldHutchison

    It matters not when it affects the defense budget or in terms of what is used in political campaigns. I see little (if any) downside – and a lot of potential upside – in getting two involved in this arms race.

  • http://www.ssce.net/Web-Articles/Web-articles-indexed-authors.html#authors-l JLenardDetroit

    like allowing our Government to disarm Law-abiding citizens of their guns to place FALSE faith in another to provide ones safety!! Same holds true for Sovereign Nations to hand over protection to/by the UN or whatever!! There will always be Criminals or Rogue Nations that Arm to do harm, especially if those around them are DUMB enough to leave themselves unprotected.

  • McKinley

    I do not recall Elliot Spitzer getting left off the hook? Much of what drove that storyline was how Spitzer was crusading against corporate vice while he failed to obey the most basic of our laws. His successor immediately admitted an affair and was more or less left off the hook. The context of the story in relation to a politician’s career and policy positions appears salient for the media saturation.

    The topic of the thread pertained to why the media is more prone to devote more column lines and bandwidth to the misdeeds of conservatives to liberals. I never suggested it was a “good” reason, only a possible one that seems credible given other patterns of coverage. There have been many high profile cases of indecent behavior by conservatives in recent years that, using media logic, deserved attention for their novelty or sensationalism – D.C. Madam scandal, Craig, Senate pages. How many Republicans have admitted affairs or indiscretions and received a relative pass from the media? You don’t know that because they weren’t reported,/underreported, and absent any study investigating this subject, it seems much of the anger directed against the media in this realm is grounded without empirical evidence as proof of a more general suspicion of a systematic hostility to the right from the MSM.

  • Martin Knight

    … you’re absolutely wasting your time. Your attempt at logic is not very compelling; i.e. since we don’t how many stories damaging to conservatives the media has passed up, we cannot say the media is biased … is that the long and short of it?

    How stupid.

    The weakness of your argument is that it must rely on the notion that Republican misdeeds are so much more “sensational” than those of Democrats. That’s the only way to explain the front page treatment Republican “scandals” get while Democrats happily get their stories relegated to page A32 with any references to their partisan affiliation neatly excised.

    As for your Spitzer mention … oh please.

    Did you forget the great pains practically all of the major outlets of the MSM took to avoid reporting on the Edwards story until the National Enquirer(!) made them look like open shills?

    I honestly think you should go sell your BS elsewhere.

  • Freedomlover

    When you’ve finished shrouding your opinion with shabby cliches, recognize the slippery slope you’re suggesting we start down. We can’t beat them by becoming them.

    Call to account any and all of their elected or appointed officials. LEAVE THEIR FAMILIES ALONE!

  • Freedomlover

    to get through some of you thick skulled proponents of abusing the relatives of elected officials to somehow damage the officials.

    Islamic Terrorists kidnap aid workers and journalists, hold them for ransom, behead them, and show videos of the beheadings on television. We are opposed to the terrorists. We need to get some Islamic innocents and videotape them as we behead them.

    That’s your logical defense of an attack on Beiden’s daughter.

    Shame on you!

    WE CAN’T BEAT THEM BY BECOMING THEM.

  • McKinley

    Perhaps, but I find the bulk of the anecdotes conservatives cite as evidence for a media bias can be explained as more a function of a novelty or sensational story than the effect of a party label. The Spitzer case is an instance of a Democratic incident under similiar conditions. That Republicans espouse “Family Values” as an important component of their national party platform suggests greater scrutiny will be applied by the media to their illicit transgressions simply for the fact that it suggests a stronger tension/conflict between ideology and practice. Is this fair? Perhaps not, but that is the media environment we operate it.

    Look, I was sentient during the 2008 campaign. I’m not suggesting bias does not exist, only that we should make more sophisticated arguments than trading stories in an echo chamber about Chris Matthews and John Edwards. Contributors on this website frequently make very strong claims on a media bias against conservatives. How can we prove this? Are there really that many Democratic indiscretions that go overlooked that only Republicans get nailed on? The note on party labels next to names is on the right track, but all and all this is very difficult to ascertain for reasons I explained earlier and probably renders any strong claims moot.

    In a hypothetical quantitative study of media bias that say examines national media saturation from WaPo, NYT, LA Times and Chi. Trib, that counts and categorizes the number of stories reported on Democrat/Republican infidelities/family misadventures, should we control for party in power, prominence/position of offender, a ‘sensationalist’ aspect, closeness to an election, spousal reaction, belated confession? Or should we look at local coverage? I could go on and on. Until proven otherwise, it is plausible that the content of the event is more important than the party label in determining the amount of coverage. Perhaps Democrats are simply better at damage control? Who knows? This seems like something that should have already been studied?

    For the record: I’m no troll. I’ve lurked this site since the ’04 election and I used to post sporadically under the handle “Balfour Conservative” until a combination of an expired college email and the Redstate 3.0 compelled me to switch.

  • Mike gamecock DeVine

    You say:

    “Does it seem the families and private lives of conservatives are more thoroughly investigated than the left?s? Maybe, anecdotely, although I?m not sure how this could be proven outside of conjecture.”

    Not sure how it could be proven? Well, given that there are a finite number of minutes in each broadcast day and given that we can count the minutes devoted to investigations….

    BTW, it has been proven by the minute counting method, and yes, the study confirmed what any thinking and attentive follower of politics in the media already knew, and no, I’m not going to google for you.

    Then you say”

    “I imagine a quantitative study of media bias in this realm could only yield spurious findings as one would have a hard time accessing the number of stories that go unreported.”

    Stop imagining and get real. What matters is what is reported.

    You continue:

    “Conservatives are probably more likely to be found explicitly guilty of hypocrisy than liberals on these vices in the youtube era. – Ritter and Craig come to mind – and it is this type of conflict that the media is systematically more likely to report with no concern for partisan labels.

    Pure illogical babble. Probably more likely? why? You don’t say.
    Explicitly? What does that qualifier add? Not a damn thing.
    YouTube era? as if
    “This type” of “conflict”? meaningless dribble
    No concern for partisan labels? Are you a newly arrived immigrant from Belgian or an American under the age of 24?

  • aesthete

    That my liberal and “moderate” friends in Tucson, AZ (or the Californian colony, as I think of it) almost all highly disapproved of this tactic. Look up polls: Rasmussen had a good one indicating that a vast majority of Americans disliked the attempt at smearing.

    I’m with you guys on that when Republicans attack, they should draw blood rather than act like Victorian-era gentlemen; heck, I think that Machiavelli’s The Prince should be required reading for Republican pols. However, we need to make sure that we’re making the right people bleed, and not wasting our time and effort on a tactic that is roundly disapproved of.

    Besides that, I have a problem with going on a vendetta against the Dems: this sets a bad precedent which, historically, hasn’t ended well for either side.

  • aesthete

    n/t

  • aesthete

    Virtually every Dem pol puts his/her kids in private schools, but shills for more public schools and less vouchers (HRC comes to mind).

    Many Dems are for “green” energy, but make almost no effort to reduce his/her own energy consumption (Al Gore comes to mind).

    Some Dems have been caught saying racial/sexual slurs, even though they’re the party of “tolerance” (Joe Biden comes to mind).

    Many Dems rail on class warfare, but give very little to charity (Barack Obama comes to mind).

    Many Dems claim that their patriotism is unassailable, but have questionable incidents in their pasts that contradict this assertion (Bill Clinton comes to mind).

    So don’t tell me that it’s just Repubs who have problems w/hypocrisy.

  • Mike gamecock DeVine

    they do violate, almost pathologically, all the values they do assert. They deem themselves above it all and exempt from the values they deem themselves to embody because they mean well, and “STAND UP” for what’s right.

    Too bad they sit down when it comes to doing right.

    great post man

  • Martin Knight

    … you’re still needing “evidence” or some “qualitative study” to prove to you that Big Media is horrifically biased against the GOP, then you were not really “sentient” all this time.

  • FJG

    The problem I see with your example is that Ms. Biden is not innocent. She is caught on tape breaking the law and has an arrest record that establishes a history of breaking the law.

    Correct me if I am wrong… but Conservatives believe in obeying the laws and working to change the laws we disagree with instead of ignoring/breaking laws we disagree with. So I think it is fair to say Conservatives oppose breaking the law and those who break the law. Therefore Ms. Biden would fall into the terrorist catagory of your analogy instead of the innocent catagory. Which sort of null and voids your example in my humble opinion.

    As I mentioned before, even if her daddy wasn’t the VPOTUS, there is a good chance that this would be an investigative story on the evening news or in the local paper on how a social worker was caught and arrested for using drugs. How she was suspended or fired for doing drugs and how she was even hired with her drug, alcohol abuse and arrest record. She is a liability for her department. It is a legitimate news piece in of itself due to the ironic/hypocritical nature of the situation. The fact that her bosses, the authorities and the media are turning a blind eye to the situation b/c of who her daddy is adds a whole different layer to the story. It shouldn’t be ignored because of who her father is.

    The fact remains that she is a grown adult woman. She decided to break the law knowing that one of the risks was being caught. She knew that if she was caught, it would be splashed in the media. Every family member of a politican knows that this is a fact of their life. It is just the way the world works. We may not like it. We may even resent it at times. But we can’t change human nature. We can only control our own actions and words. So if we don’t want to be in the news, we don’t do anything illegal, unethical or scandalous. It is that simple.

    I agree that minors or dependents of politicans are off limits. I agree that family members who are innocent and victims of straight out lies and fabrications should never have to be submitted to that ordeal. ( And thankfully there are laws that provide ways and means to protect families and enable them to fight back.) I agree that it those situations are unfair and shameful. But Ms. Biden is neither a child or innocent.

  • McKinley

    so I will, summary:

    Vitter called on Clinton to resign in light of the distraction his affairs were causing. He then proceeded to repeatedly cheat on his wife. When caught, he made the same argument Clinton did. Not the most clear-cut case of hypocrisy, but that’s how it was reported.

  • http://moelane.com/ Moe Lane

    [NT]

  • Martin Knight

    So he did not make the same argument Clinton made. He manned up, confessed to the person he had hurt most with his actions, and even went to counseling because of it.

    All before the Press learned about it.

    No hypocrisy here.