Resolved: Jen Psaki and Marie Harf Are Embarrassingly Uninformed Incompetent Hacks Who Encourage IS to Seize New Territories Just By Opening Their Giggly Mouths

Embarrassing.

If Harf seems helpless, Psaki veers toward the downright sycophantic. "The president doesn’t give himself enough credit for what he's done around the world," said Psaki in a press briefing last May. Reporters in the room laughed out loud.

...

Last September Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly remarked, in a segment on his show, that "that woman [Psaki] looks way out of her depth over there -- just the way she delivers, it just doesn’t look like she has the gravitas for that job" -- a comment that earned him a Twitter rebuke from Harf, who later called O’Reilly's language "sexist, [and] personally offensive." Setting aside the obvious facts that 1) the official spokespersons of a government agency have no business singling out for criticism a media personality, and 2) those same spokespersons probably have more productive ways to spend their time, Psaki and Harf have not come in for criticism because of their "gender identity," but because of their Delta Nu approach to diplomatic relations, as if Putin is carefully watching their Pinterest accounts and Islamic State terrorists are following them on Twitter. People in Foggy Bottom’s communications shop really seem to think that those enslaved Iraqi Christians are super-interested in Jen Psaki's Instagram....

Sure, it is easy to be hard on the Obama administration’s press people. The have the undesirable task of putting a serious face on an administration whose conduct is usually laughably unserious. But if Foggy Bottom seems particularly hapless recently, blame it on the Department of State’s dotty duo.

As Ian Tuttle notes, these two gigglebrained Sweathearts of Delta Chi are particularly bad faces to front for the president's own incoherent, girlish program -- precisely because they're so perfect for it.

Marie Harf, meanwhile, will not have her non-existent reputation sullied, and she's firing back at critics, defending her remarks about giving the Libyan Beach Decapitated Head Vollyball teams some jobfairs and Mock Interviews. She says that if she made any mistakes, it was in making arguments that are too nuanced for you dummies to understand.

That's right -- Princess Daddygirl just called you dumb.

"So you suggested that maybe if you find these young men jobs, they might not become terrorists?" Blitzer asked, echoing her critics, prompting Harf to call his statement a "gross oversimplification."

"We cannot kill every terrorist around the world, nor should we try," Harf said later. "How do you get at the root causes of this? It might be too nuanced an argument for some, like I've seen over the last 24 hours some of the commentary out there, but it’s really the smart way that Democrats, Republicans, our partners in the Arab world think we need to combat it."

Asked how she's dealing with the criticism she has been receiving for her comments, Harf said, "I don’t read it."

Regarding that last question: The idea of female equality will take a giant step forward when women are not routinely asked how they're managing routine things expected of men, like not murdering themselves due to job criticism. We saw the same syndrome in the case of Sandra Fluke -- if she's not capable of standing up to a barb from Rush Limbaugh, then she's not qualified to serve as a spokesman for anything.

Everything with liberal professional women turns into "How are you holdin' up, Sweetie?"

Either they are adult women and free citizens equal to men or they remain Daddy's Little Girls in need of male protection. They cannot be both, depending on circumstances, and depending, more importantly, on Democratic affiliation.

(Such solicitousness for the ladyfeelz most emphatically does not apply to conservative women.)

This constant solicitation of women's feeeeelz whenever they come under scrutiny or criticism -- note that every anti-GamerGate story is about how Anita Sarkesian can possibly endure mean people on Twitter -- strongly suggests to me that most liberal men and especially liberal women emphatically do not believe in the equality of the sexes, but still treat one sex as basically the Child Version of men.

Imagine reporters asking Bush, constantly, how he felt about all the criticism he was experiencing as president, and how he felt about his critics.

But watching the two of them, between Harf and Psaki, I actually think that Harf might be -- get this -- the smart one.

posted by Ace at 08:35 PM

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