Since when did 'perfect smokey eye' become an insult, America?

If you’re not familiar with the common parlance of cosmetics, you might not know that ‘a perfect smokey eye’ is a very nice way to describe a woman’s makeup – glamorous, well-applied, nicely smudged. But on the morning after the White House Correspondents’ Association (WCHA) dinner on Saturday night, you might have thought otherwise.

Comedian Michelle Wolf was slammed by a wide range of commentators for saying just that about the press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, during her keynote roast: “I actually really like Sarah,” Wolf said. “I think she’s very resourceful. But she burns facts and then she uses that ash to create a perfect smokey eye. Like maybe she’s born with it, maybe it’s lies. It’s probably lies.”

“Watching a wife and mother be humiliated on national television for her looks is deplorable,” wrote MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski, overlooking the crucial fact that Wolf was in fact complimenting the appearance of Sanders’ makeup. Wolf was mocking the fact that Sanders is a liar. Which is something that she definitely is.

There’s a bit of a backlash after every WCHA dinner, and well there should be: it’s quite a pretentious event. Known among insiders as the ‘nerd prom’, it’s a back-slappy, navel-gazing black tie affair, a scholarship fundraiser and an opportunity for a certain elite in media and politics to see and be seen and laugh at inside jokes and wear far fancier clothes than they do on the beat.

The comedian brought in to deliver the roast is expected to strike a bit close to the bone. Feathers are always ruffled a bit, but in general it’s accepted that it’s part of the fun to be a target of the jokes. It shows, after all, that you are important.

But maybe the most dark and hilarious thing about the fallout from Wolf’s performance is that her barbs against the president, his family, and close members of his administration were far more cruel and vulgar than what she said about Sanders, but no one is objecting to that. How could they, when the president himself is a man who has compelled new anchors across the land to utter the word ‘pussy’ again and again? How could they, when her jokes about his sexual encounters with adult film actresses were taken from life?

In olden days, like 2016, there was a common understanding that you couldn’t be the president and also cast vulgar and personal insults at people on Twitter. You had to choose one. But in 2018 that’s no longer the case, and the fact that Wolf’s jokes about Stormy Daniels evoked titters and shrugs is yet another sign that we’ve forgotten that the current political climate is anything but normal.

“Enough of elites all mocking us,” tweeted noted member of the conservative elite Matt Schlapp, who demonstrated his disgust by walking out of the roast, but not out of his association with the Trump administration.

It’s a shame that those on the right have used the concept of ‘snowflakes’ as an insult against those who oppose them, because time and time again it’s clear that no one is more sensitive than the far-right who follow Trump in lock step and can’t take a compliment from the other side about eye-shadow.