You see, it was really all about "optics."
The whole controversy about Michelle Obama's recent private vacation in Spain with her daughter was really just about "optics," the pundits decided. It didn't look good. Bad politics, dontcha know.
"In politics and pop culture, optics are all," wrote The New York Times' Maureen Dowd, as she embraced the right-wing attack on the First Lady as an out-of-touch elitist. "And Michelle's optics sent a message that likely made some in the White House and the Democratic Party wince."
That "optics" word is everywhere as Beltway sages conceded the vacation in and of itself was not inherently evil, but that it looked bad and that every First Lady has to understand that she's always under scrutiny and that "optics are all."
Right. And how were the "optics" when First Lady Laura Bush got a $700 haircut for the 2005 Inauguration? Or when Laura Bush went on vacation with her girlfriends along with an entourage of 25 in tow? And how were the "optics" when the taxpayers spent more than $20 million flying the Bushes back and forth to their vacation retreat in Crawford, Texas?
How were those "optics"? They were just fine because nobody in the Beltway press corps ever cared about Laura Bush's "optics." Instead, for eight years she was, without question, deemed off-limits to any sort of sustained scrutiny. First Lady Bush was off-limits in a way that her Democratic predecessor, Hillary Clinton, was not. And she was off-limits in a way that her current Democratic successor most certainly is not.
Yes, the press uses a different, snarkier standard when covering Democratic first ladies. And frankly, all hell would've broken loose on the Right if anyone in the press even thought about putting Laura Bush under a partisan lens, let alone questioning her intentions.
The goal posts have been moved so that everything Michelle Obama does is now in play and seen through a political lens and is subjected to the same type of sniping that elected public officials are. It's the same standard the press used for Hillary Clinton, and it's a standard the same press corps absolutely refused to apply to Laura Bush.
Read the full Media Matters column here.