Twin Terrors
How bad were the Bush girls?
snip.......
But if the twins were aware that they'd been saddled with a horrific clunker of a speech, they didn't let on. They were too busy basking in the glory of themselves. While the mystified audience obediently clapped after each putative punch line, the girls let out appreciative giggles, smiled and tilted their heads this way and that. (Barbara, in particular, seems to have been studying the Campaign Head Tilt at her mother's knee; when Jenna was speaking, Barbara often gave a knockout impression of Laura, who frequently appears as though she's had a run-in with a zealous taxidermist.) Despite the lukewarm reception, Jenna and Barbara seemed to feel the speech was going over well.
That's not really surprising, since the twins appear confident that everything they do will go over well. Take, for example, Jenna's line about the twins' more tabloid-worthy escapades: "We kept trying to explain to my dad that when we were young and irresponsible, well, we were young and irresponsible!" Self-deprecating jokes like this one are Politics 101 these days—the reference to their father's own account of his misspent youth was a nice touch—and I'm not one of those prigs who think the girls' wilder behavior is particularly noteworthy. Plenty of college kids, given the opportunity to party with Ashton Kutcher, would seize it. Candidates' children don't ask for the spotlight, and in general, we should give them room to make mistakes. But when Jenna and Barbara decided to throw their coming out party at the convention, they invited us to draw conclusions about what they're like and about what their parents value.
In this case, the sense of entitlement in Jenna's joke was unmistakable: We will do whatever we want. You will love us anyway. This self-confidence may be a tribute to very good parenting: The Bushes have raised cheerful, self-assured daughters. Or it may be an indictment of very bad parenting: Their daughters are bratty and self-involved.more......
http://slate.msn.com/id/2106067/
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