She's is her mid-30s, politically-connected and wealthy because of it, and last but not least a Clinton campaign surrogate. So it's about darn time that the media stop treating Chelsea Clinton as off-limits, Jack Shafer of Politico writes in a column today headlined, "Time for Chelsea Clinton's Easy Ride to End."
Here's a taste:
When precisely did Chelsea Clinton complete her transition from a White House kid whom journalists agreed to treat as off-limits to a public figure deserving of the full scrutiny of the press corps?
The unsettling answer to the question appears to be, “Not yet.” The soon-to-be 36-year-old occupies the status of an American princess—Diana on the Potomac, if you will. The press covers her, of course, attempting to ask her substantive question, but mostly she exists to grace the covers of magazines—Fast Company and Elle most recently—and be treated to lighter-than-air puff pieces.
[...]
[A]t some point—early adulthood—the general immunity from critical coverage needs to end. The threshold for newsworthiness recedes, and the children of presidents become more like the siblings, cousins, uncles and parents of presidents. In other words, if one of President Obama’s daughters got busted for drunk driving, few would expect saturation coverage from the press. But, say, had Obama’s Boston aunt gotten arrested for drunk driving before she died in 2014, there would have been no reason for the press to turn a blind eye. Chelsea Clinton should be treated no more royally than the Nixon daughters, Susan Ford, Amy Carter, the Gore children, or the Bush and Reagan progeny.
The coverage threshold falls lower still if a grown-up White House kid expands her own public profile, as Chelsea Clinton most definitely has. She has maintained a role as adviser and advocate inside the Clinton family’s political dynasty since leaving Stanford University. In late 2011, she crossed over to the dark and often invasive art of journalism, working at NBC News as a special correspondent ($600,000/year) until August 2014. Today, Chelsea serves as vice chair of the politically controversial Clinton Foundation, which has raised $2 billion since 2001. She’s a board member at Barry Diller’s IAC (paid a reported $300,000 a year, plus stock awards). She charges $65,000 per speech. Last fall, she published a book on “empowerment” for kids. She’s powerful. She exercises influence. She’s all grown up, soon to be the mother of two. If she isn’t newsworthy, nobody is.
[...]
Chelsea Clinton deserves no special treatment from the press, and from what I can tell, she no longer expects it. “I’m really grateful I grew up in a house in which media literacy was a survival skill,” she said upon becoming an NBC News correspondent in 2011. Nobody put it better than Halperin last month when he said, “The notion of laying off her seems ridiculous. Fair coverage, but not no coverage.”
Shafer is on point, of course, but I wouldn't be surprised if he gets a few icy glares and cold shoulders from the most sycophantic of Hillary sympathizers among his colleagues in the Washington press corps.
You can read Shafer's full piece here.
