WaPo cartoonist depicts Ted Cruz's daughters as monkeys, says it's his fault she did it

You'll notice something about the way the media treat the children of political candidates. They'll say that children are off-limits for ridicule and attacks, but that's not actually how the rule works in their minds. In practice, it's more like this:

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Children of Democrat candidates are just about always off-limits, no matter what. Children of Republican candidates are basically off-limits until the candidate introduces us to them in any sort of campaign context. Bring them up on stage at a campaign rally? Put them in a campaign ad? Include a photo of them in a campaign mailer? Well! OK, buddy! The game has changed now! You used them as props for your campaign! You're the one who's making them political now, champ! Don't start screaming and yelling when we talk about them now, ace! You put them in the spotlight, not us! And that, of course, is the biggest bunch of Bolshevik ever heard. To suggest that a candidate showing us his family is tantamount to making children a "political prop" and thus gives license to media muckrakers to attack them utter nonsense. But it has long been accepted as conventional wisdom among legacy media types, and we saw it briefly on display yesterday - literally - as Washington Post cartoonist Ann Telnaes draw a cartoon depicting Ted Cruz's two young daughters as monkeys. And once the cartoon was published, Telnaes immediately took to Twitter with the standard media defense for attacking the children of Republicans:

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https://t.co/7hafBacOiK

— Ann Telnaes (@AnnTelnaes) December 22, 2015 Right off the bat, let's destroy Telnaes's dishonest and idiotic defense here. No, Ann, a candidate is not required to keep his children in the shadows at all times to avoid licensing you to draw them as dancing monkeys. There is no equivalence between the two. Putting your children in an ad does not necessarily mean you cynically exploited them for your own nefarious, self-serving purposes. It might just mean you wanted to introduce us to your family. Those responding to Telnaes's initial tweet, including Michelle Malkin, pointed out the obvious - that she would never have applied this logic to the daughters of Barack Obama. Nor should she. And she shouldn't have done it with Ted Cruz's daughters either. The Post pulled the cartoon once the criticism started, but Post editor Fred Hiatt wasn't exactly a buck-stops-here guy about it, making sure to let everyone know he didn't look at the cartoon before it was published. But this could prove to be a useful incident in that it's an opportunity to redefine this stupid media guideline about the children of politicians. Here's the new rule: No, you can't attack their children, regardless of party. No matter what. Even if the children are "used as political props" in your minds. That still doesn't give you the right to attack them. Don't like it? Suck it up, buttercup. Stop being such jerks.

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