The Washington Post reports that the White House is in a blind rage that President Obama's daughters (not their names, not their images) were invoked in what looks like a perfectly benign ad promoting vegetarian meal options for school kids, published by the advocacy group, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM).
According to the head of PCRM, Neal Barnard, the White House lawyers even called him up:
"They're very nice people. I like them a lot," Barnard says. "But they called and said: Please take those down, you can't mention the kids and so forth. . . . They felt that mentioning the president's children was off-limits. They said [they're] not going to allow the use of their daughters as leverage."
The Post even rolled out the Republican pollster Frank Luntz, who also happens to be the pollster for the Israel Project, advising them on how to pass Israeli hasbara off to the American public to say:
"The children of the president are always off-limits. Always. No exceptions," Luntz says. "No ifs, ands or buts. And while it may draw short-term attention to the issue, the White House will hate the organization for it. And I assure you they will be punished. You don't mess with the president's children. It's an unwritten rule."
Ok, very well. This makes perfect sense. The President's children should not be used in political campaigns. But as soon as I read the Post story, I remembered Obama's own words from a pandering speech he made to the Israel Lobby, AIPAC in March 2007:
"Our helicopter landed in the town of Kiryat Shmona on the border. What struck me first about the village was how familiar it looked. The houses and streets looked like ones you might find in a suburb in America. I could imagine young children riding their bikes down the streets. I could imagine the sounds of their joyful play just like my own daughters. There were cars in the driveway. The shrubs were trimmed. The families were living their lives. Then, I saw a house that had been hit with one of Hezbollah’s Katyusha rockets."
Here, Obama himself is invoking his daughters in the most political and controversial context imaginable: a speech to AIPAC in the midst of an election campaign, where he is using his daughters to shore up the idea that he is as blind a supporter of Israel and its bombing of Lebanon as his audience, and that he can be trusted to supply Israel with all the weapons it wants.
So I am trying to understand the principle at stake here:
(1) Is the rule that only Obama is allowed to use his daughters in shameless, crass political campaigns?
(2) Is it okay for Obama to use his daughters in crass political campaigns, but only until he wins and then they suddenly go "off limits"?
(3) Is it only okay to invoke Obama's daughters in defense of Israel, but not vegetarianism?
Am I missing something? Can anyone help?
