The old white men and women’s issues somehow continues to trudge on, long after even I assumed we had done settled all this. I’m not quite of the mind that Democrats are the saviors and keepers of the flame of women’s rights and the like. I am very certain that Republicans are anti-women most everything though.
This recent hub-bub over Hilary Rosen admonishing Ann Romney’s place as the head of the women’s social and economic issues for the Romney campaign, is more a desperate right-wing reach to attempt to muddy the political waters in terms of women’s issues. Hilary Rosen’s right though: what the hell DOES Ann Romney know about real women’s economic issues. Sure, she was a stay at home mom, raising five children. Yawn. I’m not going to placate a group of people with “oh yeah, that is so hard”. I’m going to go with the “I’d rather be a stay at home parent than out digging ditches or paving roads for a living” argument.
I understand that raising children is hard, but for Ann Romney the assertion that that was a job worthy of propelling her to understand the plight of the modern working woman is absurd. The wife of a multi-millionaire just raised these kids ALL BY HERSELF? Give me a fucking break. The maids, nannies, next door neighbors with children of their own in the affluent areas where the Romney’s lived, and so on. This is a fantasy to women who have to work the 9-to-5, 40 hour week, AND raise children. This is pure mythology to the low-income single mothers, who have work two or three jobs to keep afloat. Ann Romney can relate to their struggles?
Hilary Rosen’s point is still apt: what the fuck does Ann Romney know of women struggle and sacrifice? For the Romney campaign as a whole, this was an opportunity for Ann to be a political operative of her own and score cheap political points. Then milk that she once had breast cancer and currently has multiple sclerosis. Never mind that she can afford the best treatments and never have to decide to take an overpriced treatment over caring and providing for her children or leaving them in mountains of debt and cratering their futures. Heaven forbid she ever have that struggle.
This isn’t about the “job” of being a stay-at-home mother or it’s inherent weight amidst the myriad of jobs in the world. To see right-wing pundits act as though Democrats were all ashamed of or cowing away from Hilary Rosen’s comment is a desperate reach. Do you really think this is going to convince independent women voters that the right-wing and the Republican Party isn’t still the most regressive party in terms of women’s rights? Just because Obama played lip-service to the Oprah crowd by saying that stay-at-home mother’s have the hardest job, doesn’t mean that the ENTIRE Democrat Party is admitting that they have a secret women’s issue problem that’s just now bubbling up.
Even more saddening is the news media, instead of putting Hilary Rosen’s comment in context by, I don’t know, playing everything after the “never worked a day in her life” part, instead chose to hit the streets and asking mothers if their mothering was indeed harder. What the hell is this shit? Mrs. Rosen’s point wasn’t that motherhood wasn’t hard, she’s a single mother herself.
The Romney’s are mistaking benevolence with compassion. Mitt Romney and his generous tithes to the Mormon Church are not a substitute for general human compassion. That they pay taxes isn’t an assertion that they understand the struggles and needs of the less fortunate that subside on government assistance. It’s been the general problem with the Romney campaign in general: he, and by extension his wife are completely out of touch with the rest of America. Ann Romney being a woman will do little to buoy the fact that the Republican Party her husband is attempting to lead is aggressively and publicly anti-woman and anti-poor. Even her husband said of poor mother’s who wanted money to raise a family that instead of depending on welfare “hey, have some dignity and get a job…you’ll be better for it.”
This reach by right-wing pundits stinks so bad they should be ashamed of themselves for attempting to even bother trying to rub their shit covered hands on anyone else. Their failure to keep their fringe, women hating elements in line is why Mitt Romney is going to lose a vast majority of the women voters. Ann Romney’s political operative song and dance aren’t going to sway the single women voters, and I highly doubt that married or mother voters are going to be convinced to just sweep aside the last few months of Republican overreach on their reproductive rights and civil liberties. It’s a nice attempt, they should’ve just picked a better Democrat Party pundit gaffe to harp on to build a case with.
