(I must preface this post by reiterating that I am neither Democrat nor Republican. I have a history of voting both ways. In fact now hold the highest disdain for all politicians. This post is just an observation.)
Before yesterday, I had no idea who Hilary Rosen is. A few years ago, I decided to crawl back under my rock and devote whatever spare time I could muster to writing. Novels, not opinion. Even if I'm online, I rarely pay attention to flashes of news on my Yahoo!, AOL, or MSN pages. I'm equally blind to advertising and the Kardashians. I'm busy.
But with the blogosphere lighting up like the Fourth of July over statements Ms. Rosen made on national television, everyone in the world now knows who she is. Yes, I clicked. I read. Don't we all rubberneck when an accident occurs?
Hilary Rosen is a modern, liberated, and loving woman, according to her partner. She's a "gift" for the Republicans, according to the media. The most unusual suspects are defending her, including Fox News' Greta Van Susteren.
To me, Hilary Rosen is the current scapegoat in the political landscape. Think of American politics as I do, as a game of t-ball. A six-year-old slams the ball hard into centerfield, and nine little kids run after it at the same time, bumping into each other and knocking each other out on the way. Meanwhile, the ball rolls under the fence and is just out of reach. Hilary Rosen is our ball-du-jour.
The resulting hoo-ha is what is to be expected, and more. From the tire marks on her back, Ms. Rosen has been effectively thrown under the bus. In addition to traversing the gap of political correctness, Ms. Rosen's remarks (which I find unremarkable, as they are her opinions, and she's entitled to have them, and God forbid I ever become politically correct) may have offended a very large base of voters.
Politicians, take note: You don't want to mess with Stay At Home Moms (SAHMs). Even temporarily. Even if it's just a game of t-ball.
I am a mother, although, granted, my children are grown. I was not a SAHM, unless you count those three or four months immediately after giving birth as "staying" at home. I do not, and neither do die-hard SAHMs. Although I would have loved to have stayed at home full time, I had to work.
However, during the time my children were young, I've had the pleasure of many interactions with SAHMs. They're the ones who take their children to a variety of mommy and child related activities. I know this, because I attempted to squeeze at least one such activity into my own children's lives on a regular basis.
Article comments
1 - Dr Dreadful
Ann Romney's understated reaction to that particular piece of verbal diarrhoea was wise. The wife of a presidential candidate plainly and simply cannot be a stay-at-home mum: had she chosen to go on the warpath she would quickly have discovered that it was clogged with brambles.
Nice point about whether SAHMs ought to be regarded as human beings rather than 1s and 0s in a voting machine, but something of an unrealistic expectation when candidates and strategists are dealing with tens of millions of people. Even heads of state are only capable of having meaningful interactions with a few hundred people. So you kind of have to approach the electorate at large as statistics rather than individuals.
That said, if you don't handle your statistics properly you run the risk of bollocksing things up royally.
I watched a similar discussion on Laurence O'Donnell last night on MSNBC. They were talking about Romney's hard stance on immigration alienating him from the Hispanic vote (which supposedly he needs a significant chunk of in order to win), and whether picking Sen. Marco Rubio as his running mate might help him.
They didn't think it would, but nobody seemed to pick up on a couple of obvious reasons why it wouldn't, such as the fact that the Hispanic population in the US is not some single homogeneous mass, and that Rubio is Cuban whereas most Latino immigrants are from Mexico and points south.