leave the gals alone

The conventional wisdom, developed over the past 12 hours by cable news and bloggers, is the Bush daughters flopped over their speech at the convention last night, revealing themselves as unsavvy ditzes. This, even according to Bill Kristol and Fred Barnes over at Fox news.

I say, leave the girls alone. I saw part of their speaking, and just read the joint speech on the GOP Convention website. Sure, their jokes fell flat at the GOP convention; but then, this is the GOP convention--they only laugh at the Kerry jokes.

Really, though. This speech was not written by the daughters. It's clearly a cute little speech prepared by a handler. And while we might praise comic delivery, I was unaware either daughter was a drama major. The larger point is this: a cute convention speech is hardly the source from which to make judgments on these girls. And, the propensity of so many pundits to do just that reveals the shallowness of so many political thinkers.

Anyway, I kinda liked this line: "Granny, we love you dearly, but you're just not very hip. She thinks 'Sex in the City' is something married people do, but never talk about."