As you’ve probably noticed, much of the media’s focus in its coverage of the current Anthony Weiner scandal has been on the candidate’s wife Huma Abedin. Over the past few weeks, it’s seemed like the media just doesn’t know how to cover the Michigan-born, Saudi Arabia-raised, South Asian former aide to Hillary Clinton. Each day brings another story full of assumptions about Abedin’s background and upbringing and endless speculation about how those biographical details have affected her personal choices.
Without further ado, here are the top 5 worst of the worst.
[dropcap]1 [/dropcap]Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd:
When you puzzle over why the elegant Huma Abedin is propping up the eel-like Anthony Weiner, you must remember one thing: Huma was raised in Saudi Arabia, where women are treated worse by men than anywhere else on the planet.
Typical reaction:
https://twitter.com/lisang/status/361570890741321728
[dropcap]2 [/dropcap]Radio host Rush Limbaugh:
Huma is a Muslim. In that regard, Weiner ought to be able to get away with anything. Muslim women don’t have any power, right? Muslim women are beheaded, stoned, whatever if they drive, have affairs. In certain countries, Muslim women, if they’re raped, are killed — it’s their fault.
Typical Reaction:
https://twitter.com/ArifCRafiq/status/361621002557472770
[dropcap]3 [/dropcap] National Review’s Andrew McCarthy:
It’s hard to just pick one. Highlights include branding Huma’s mother an “influential sharia activist,” criticizing Huma herself for being a member of George Washington University’s Muslim Students Association while still a student, and insinuating that Huma is using her marriage as a front “to deflect attention from her associations with various Islamic supremacists.”
Typical reaction:
It’s not pretty.
[dropcap]4 [/dropcap]
[Huma] approached in a knit white top and navy-blue business skirt, her dark, almost black hair down to her shoulders. She wore bright-red lipstick, which gave her lips a 3-D look, her brown eyes were pools of empathy evolved through a thousand generations of what was good and decent in the history of the human race. The harsh, cheap buck lighting in the coffee shop couldn’t lay a glove on her. By the time she sat down, the harmony of angels had vanquished the tinny background music from every corporate space on the planet. Of course, you’d seen pictures before. But you’d also seen pictures of the Taj Mahal. It didn’t quite come up to actually being there.
Typical reaction:
In her aptly titled piece “Next Time, Try Not to Compare Huma Abedin to the Taj Mahal,” The Atlantic’s Heather Horn noted, “This reads like someone is trying to troll Edward Said.”
[dropcap]5[/dropcap]Prozac Nation author Elizabeth Wurtzel:
I know some people find the situation baffling, but Huma Abedin grew up in Saudi Arabia. She might be joyous just to not be wearing a burka.
— Elizabeth Wurtzel (@LizzieWurtzel) July 28, 2013
Typical Reaction:
Non-existent. It’s not 1994 anymore.
In Elizabeth Wurtzel’s defense, she hasn’t been relevant since 1994.
This is brilliant