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Saturday, April 14, 2012

Republican War On Women Rages On

Everybody knows by now that Hilary Rosen, a Democratic pundit unaffiliated with the Obama administration (and a rather corporatist one at that, a moneyed muckety muck who managed to side wrongly with BP and wrongly against Napster, for example, right when it mattered most, just saying), made an offhand comment on the tee vee the other day that the wife of Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, Ann Romney, had "never worked a day in her life" and in so doing apparently, unexpectedly, tore the lid off of Hell.

Of course, Rosen made this point in a discussion about Mitt Romney's curious declaration that his wife was his primary consultant on women's issues, speaking as though she were the ambassador of some alien unfathomable species with whom he otherwise is in scant contact (which, if true, would account for much of his weirdness on this topic). Apparently, Ann Romney has told Mitt in no uncertain terms that the ladies are much more worried about how much multimillionaires like her husband have to pay in taxes than they are in things like Romney's good friend Republican Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker overturning laws securing the right of women to sue for equal pay for equal work or things like Republican Arizona Governor Jan Brewer making Constitutionally protected medically indispensable healthcare procedures like abortion all but impossible to procure in her state or Republican legislators in Virginia insisting that doctors must rape women with transvaginal probes and humiliate them with angelic ultrasound images of their soon to be murdered fetal gum-wad homunculi if they need an abortion.

Quite obviously and sensibly, what Rosen was pointing out is that Ann Romney might not be the best person for Mitt to consult if he really wants an accurate sense of the way women in America who happen not to have spent their whole lives leisurely lolling about in mansions feel about issues like the Lily Ledbetter Act or Planned Parenthood or Roe v Wade.

Republicans decided to pretend that when Rosen made this point what she really meant to deny was that raising kids is real work or worthy of respect and that, therefore, her comment slotted neatly into one of the readily available narratives through which Republicans express their sense of being forever aggrieved and infinitely victimized by political correctness, by disrespect for the total awesomeness of the Confederacy, by the War on Christmas, by the racism of being called on their racism, by the pink octopus of the homosexual agenda, by various secretly communist environmentalist hoaxes, and, of course, by feminazis and uppity negroes. Needless to say, and hence apparently infinitely needful to say, Rosen is herself a mother (even if, dun dun DUN... a lesbian one) who has raised kids and would be the last person to think that the work she was doing raising her kids wasn't the work it was, but she went on tee vee to apologize anyway to anyone who might have honestly thought she was denigrating motherhood when she was obviously making a point that Ann Romney's extreme wealth gave her extraordinary privileges as a mother that make her altogether atypical.

Ann Romney responded with robotic predictability on Fox News, self-righteously insisting that "we need to respect all choices that women make," as if Rosen didn't respect the choices of parents (of either sex, actually, Ann) who focus on raising their children over other concerns, often at great personal cost, also as if she and her husband are not themselves devoted to precisely a Republican politics systematically denying women choices they would make about the health of their own bodies or the choice to devote themselves to careers as equals to their male peers, also as if 99% of American woman can make anything like the same sort of choices a super-rich 1% woman with access to nannies, maids, drivers, tutors, infinite resources and leisure time does -– which was, of course, Rosen's obvious point from the beginning, precisely as true and as damning as it was when she said it.

I personally don't think that President Obama should have made public remarks distancing himself from what Rosen said. I mean, can you imagine Romney having to distance himself from the radioactively racist sexist homophobic Islamophobic death-drooling militarism and gun-nuttery and so on that wingnut pundits remark on in public places from perches exactly equally proximate to Romney's campaign as Rosen is to Obama's on a daily basis? I certainly don't think Obama said anything wrong, in fact I thought his comments were quite spot on, and who can say whether the Republicans would have vomited up more or less phony outrage had he said nothing instead of something in the first place? It is impossible to predict how these lying loonies will react to anything, really. I definitely think the handful of timorous DNC folks who seemed to think that "Rosengate" means Democrats should retreat from the highly concise, highly memorable, highly effective, highly accurate messaging about a "Republican War on Women" are obviously quite silly and useless, and I am happy to see that few seem to be taking them seriously, as Joe Biden, various Democratic Senators, and certainly popular progressive media figures continue to use the phrase.

It remains to be seen whether the incredible gender gap opening up in support of Obama will be the least bit diminished by "Rosengate." I personally doubt it will be, especially as obliging Republicans continue to pass their anti-woman anti-contraception anti-abortion anti-healthcare anti-equity legislation and indulge their sexist ids in public. For me, the lies and laughs and slurs issuing from Republican mouths over the course of Rosengate looked far more like one more ugly episode in the ongoing War On Women than the glorious end of the War on terms favorable to the Republicans, of all things.

Certainly, if nothing else, by jumping on the anti-Rosen bandwagon Ann Romney demonstrated a cynical deceptive opportunism that proves beyond a doubt that she is a good match for her equivocating, prevaricating, not exactly scintillating, endlessly awkward-making humanoid husband. It is nice to be clear about that before we continue on in this joyless ritual through to victory in November.

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