MAUREEN CALLAHAN: Woke White House is perpetually offended by us. Shame they can’t do their jobs

Can’t anyone take a joke anymore? Not if you’re a Democrat.

The purported bigot of the hour is none other than Washington DC Boy Scout Mike Pence.

He’s under fire for this quip about Pete Buttigieg’s possible presidential candidate: “When Pete’s two kids were born, he took two months of maternity leave, stranding thousands of travelers at airports, shutting down the air traffic system, and colliding planes near mid-air. . I mean, Pete Buttigieg is the only person in human history to have had a child and the rest of us are going to have postpartum depression.”

Funny. WHERE. But Mr. Vice President – you forgot to mention the country’s crippling supply chain crisis.

If there’s one major misstep here, it’s using “maternity leave” instead of “paternity leave.” But you could easily chalk that up as a generation gap (Pence is 63 to Buttigieg’s 41).

Could it be that Pence was mistaken? No. It’s immediately DEFCON 1 in the White House. Full nuclear outrage.

“The former vice president’s homophobic joke about Secretary Buttigieg was offensive and inappropriate,” said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, “especially since he treated women suffering from postpartum depression as a punchline.”

Please. Stop.

No one thinks Mike Pence is mocking postpartum women.

And he made these comments over a roast, no less!

The vice president spoke at the dinner of the Gridiron Club, one of the oldest and most prestigious gatherings of American journalists.

Roasts, by definition, are meant to shock. People are supposed to speak the unspeakable. That joke was pretty gentle.

If there’s one major misstep here, it’s using “maternity leave” instead of “paternity leave.” But you could easily chalk that up as a generation gap (Pence is 63 to Buttigieg’s 41).

And by the way – just because a joke is awkward doesn’t mean there isn’t some truth in it.

What is really offensive is a government that supports this inaction.

As Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg is an unmitigated disaster. The former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, has zero qualifications and is pretending this job is below him, boring, just a placeholder until he can run for president again – yet another job well above his skill set.

Buttigieg’s delayed response to the Ohio toxic train derailment — putting his designer boots-clad feet on the ground nearly three weeks after residents complained of pungent fumes, polluted water and air, dead animals and sudden health problems — would have been the death knell for someone else with his track record.

As is his defensive response to appearing the day after former President Trump. To CNN: “It’s really rich to see some of these people. . . who wouldn’t know their way around a TJ Maxx if their lives depended on it, presenting themselves as if they genuinely care about the forgotten middle of the country.”

Talk about a joke. Do we really think that mayor Piet is shopping with a discount?

This is a transport secretary flying private. The one pressed against Americans at the gas pump tells them to buy electric cars. A Harvard-educated former McKinsey consultant who raised an estimated 0,000 to .

2 million in book and podcast deals over the past two years. Whose husband complained that they couldn’t afford “the one-bedroom-plus-den” DC apartment they wanted.

Speaking of Pete’s husband Chasten, he tweeted a photo of Pete sitting by their child’s crib in the hospital, writing, “A fair question for you, @Mike_Pence, after your attempted prank this weekend. If your grandchild was born prematurely and put on a ventilator at two months old – their little fingers wrapped around yours as the monitors beep in the background – where would you be?’

Buttigieg’s delayed response to the Ohio toxic train derailment — putting his designer boots-clad feet on the ground nearly three weeks after residents complained of pungent fumes, polluted water and air, dead animals and sudden health problems — would have been the death knell for someone else with his track record.

Oh, the melodrama. No one is saying Pete shouldn’t have been with their baby. They say if you can’t do the job and get a six-figure salary paid by us taxpayers, get out. But instead of addressing a lazy, lazy, unqualified transportation secretary — a liability — who would rather address “racist” highways than post-pandemic shipping and airline and supply chain disasters (child nutrition shortage, anyone?), the White House throws a fit.

The Dems, increasingly humorless, devout and eternally wary of microaggression, cannot resist the opportunity to accuse conservatives of racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia. . . so it goes on.

Lest we forget Biden about then-candidate Barack Obama in 2008, “I mean, you have the first mainstream African-American who is articulate, clear and clean and a nice guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.’

That comment? Bygone times.

But White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Pence “must apologize to women and LGBTQ people, who have the right to be treated with dignity and respect.” Talk about an overreaction. It comes particularly richly from one of the worst White House press secretaries in recent history.

Jean-Pierre’s utter ineptitude is reminiscent of another unqualified mercenary: Kamala Harris.

Don’t take my word for it – here’s Biden on the campaign trail: ‘If I’m elected president. . . I promise that I will indeed choose a woman as Vice President.” Then the Democratic party made sure he chose the right woman. “He better choose a black woman,” Democratic National Committee Black Caucus chairwoman Virgie Rollins said in 2020.

Jean-Pierre’s utter ineptitude is reminiscent of another unqualified mercenary: Kamala Harris.

Top Democrats have agonized over Kamala’s poor performance from the start. She is uninformed, unprepared, unaccomplished, runs a chaotic office with a high turnover of staff and tends to laugh at the most inappropriate times. Her polls are in the restroom, with 49.5 percent of voters on her record, according to Five Thirty Eight. CNN reports that Hollywood is agitating for someone else on the ticket.

Even Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren is hesitant to run behind Kamala for vice president on the 2024 ticket.

And Liz got in big trouble with the ladies of The View for that, because—you guessed it—she apparently empowers racists. Elizabeth Warren, whose leftist credentials are otherwise impeccable.

Ana Navarro: “Stop playing into the hands of those who can’t stand the fact that she’s the first woman, a vice president of color, and don’t want her to succeed.”

Alyssa Farah Griffin disagreed. “I think there’s some concern about the lack of policy performance she’s made as vice president.”

The insufferable, self-righteous Sunny Hostin entered, speaking in that overly calm, lilting cadence that barely conceals her contempt: “I’m surprised there’s concern,” she said. “I think it has a lot to do with it, she’s a black woman.”

Oh lord, let it rest!

Not everything is racist. Some jokes are just jokes.

And some people are just terrible at their jobs.