"I think the one thing we can be sure of is that she lived in households that were wealthy enough to afford domestic help both as a child and as an adult, which is not the type of lifestyle most typical Americans have experienced, and the point that ought to be driven home if Mitt Romney wants to continue to hold his wife out there as some representative of average American women and their concerns," as Heather over at Crooks and Liars states.
As Think Progress elaborates, "Romney and allies cried that Democrats had declared “war on moms” after a Democratic strategist said Romney’s wife hadn’t worked a day in her life. Romney’s camp said this meant Democrats don’t value stay at home moms and motherhood, while they believe that women who stay home are doing real work. But for every Romney action, there is an equal and opposite Romney reaction, and this morning, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes dug up a video of Romney from just January in which the Republican presidential candidate said he wanted to require women who receive welfare to work outside the home, even if their children are very young. But this is worse than hypocritical because there is a clear difference here — women who receive welfare benefits, the ones Romney wants to force to work, are poor, while Romney’s wife is very wealthy. And this exactly the point CNN contributor Hillary Rosen was trying to make, inartfully, when she sparked this controversy. Ann Romney had the luxury of choosing to devote herself full time to raising her children. It’s hard work, no doubt, but millions of mothers are forced to work and raise their kids at the same time, as Romney says he wants to require poor women on government benefits to do."
What you say here is in line with how The Rude Pundit and others are spinning what Rosen said. However, if a person listens to the entire quote Rosen herself ends her remarks by putting them in a context that is quite different from the spin. She shows exactly what she meant, it is not confusing or ambiguous. Never the less, the bulk of bloggers and pundits will of course be ignoring her concluding remarks that Romney is very conservative and old-fashioned in his views of women. She didn't say Ann R. "never worked" because she was so wealthy, she said it was all because the Romney's (Mitt specifically) were so "old-fashioned". She was NOT framing her remarks in terms of the Romney family's wealth AT ALL. She was referring to his traditional paternalistic views of women. So she was indeed making very unfortunate remarks. This can not be denied. Her point was not about the amount of money or domestic help Ann Romney has, but was about the "old-fashioned" role Ann takes as a result of Mitt's old-fashioned beliefs. I can type and re-phrase this a hundred times, yet I suspect it will roll past people's eyes like so much smoke.
ReplyDeleteOne Talking Head made a stupid remark on TV. She seems to have revealed her own smug attitude regarding "old-fashioned" Moms. A lot of people fell like that and "old-fashioned Moms" get that reaction frequently, which is why they are pissed off now. You get sick of it. But I can't figure out WHY is this one pundit-woman SO amazingly important that it's worth everyone's time to re-spin and propagandize over? It's ridiculous. She wasn't speaking for the Obama administration, she was not giving voice to an official position of the Democrat party, she was speaking her own mind on a talk show. She stepped in it. So what. Why is she so important that you have to defend her?
And here's a side note- it's really not true at all as so many are beginning to say, that only those who can afford to stay home do. That is not true amongst the working class. The working class family's views and behaviors are quite different than the middle class and upper-middles. But once again, the party only cares about those with the means to make donations, so who gives a damn about how non-middle class people live. Anyways, it's all a bunch of lame spin that just makes one woman's gaffe look worse, not better. Y'all are owning it, and compounding it when you should be just letting it lay there and die it's own death. If her career dies with it, whatever. That's how politics goes, she would know that by now.