Why Hilary Rosen Is Right: "Ann Romney is not an expert on women's issues and on what mothers need"

[Better Believe It]

Why Hilary Rosen Is Right
by Jessica Valenti
April 12, 2012

Rosen was responding to Mitt Romney’s constant trotting out of Ann when he gets a question on women’s issues:

Guess what, his wife has actually never worked a day in her life. She’s never really dealt with the kinds of economic issues that a majority of the women in this country are facing in terms of how do we feed our kids, how do we send them to school and how do we—why do we worry about their future?

There’s nothing there about stay-at-home moms, or the idea that that raising children isn’t work. Rosen was referring to the fact that Ann Romney—an incredibly rich and elite woman—likely does not understand the economic concerns of most American women. Again, it was unfortunate choice of words—but she wasn’t wrong.

Focusing on this slip-up just brings more attention to the way in which a Romney presidency wouldn’t support mothers. Because empty platitudes about motherhood “being the hardest job in the world” doesn’t change the reality of most moms’ lives, or make their job any easier.

But it’s not just that Romney is bad for women (whether they work outside the home or not). What’s being lost in this conversation is the incredibly facile and insulting notion that just because a woman made the decision to marry Romney and occasionally talk to him about other women, that he is somehow well-informed on women’s issues. Ann Romney is not an expert on women’s issues just because she happens to be one. And she’s not an expert in what mothers need just because she has children. Believing otherwise is infantilizing and reduces women’s very important and complex concerns to beauty parlor chitchat.

Read the full article at:

http://www.thenation.com/blog/167370/why-hilary-rosen-right?rel=emailNation

[customerserviceguy]

1. Hilary Rosen gave the story to Romney today

If she had said, "It's great that he hears what his wife says, but who tells him what things are like for ordinary working women who have to hold down a job, keep house, AND raise the kids?"

By dragging Ann directly into this, she committed a serious error. Hopefully, everybody on our side learns from this. Spouses and children are off limits, period, unless they say something incendiary. It's safe to say that Mitt is privileged, it's very risky to say that about the family members who are not directly running for President. Hopefully, this will be over with by Sunday night.

[emilyg]

2. Good post.

[SydBAThule]

5. Disagree if a canidates spouse or adult kids, 18+, open their piehole and say anything even

remotely political they are fair game IMHO.

[customerserviceguy]

9. And it was Mittens who made the stupid comment

Not Ann Romney.

Here's the problem: Up until this week, both Hilary Rosen and Ann Romney were virtual unknowns to most of the American people. Now, both women have their names prominently in the news, and for those Americans, the first impression of Ann is that she's a victim, while the first impression of Hilary Rosen is that she's just a typical "career woman" who looks down on women who don't work outside of the house.

It's not how to win a news cycle.

[brewens]

3. It's a hell of a lot easier with unlimited funds. I suppose someone is trying

to dig up anything on her also having domestic help. I'm kind of doubting she also did all the house/s work.

[midnight]

4. I agree with Hillary Rosen. Anne too pampered to know about the 99 percent.

[calimary]

6. Hilary Rosen is correct. Maybe that one sentence was a little clumsy but she's still

correct, and it's a point well worth making and remembering. ann romney cannot in a MILLION YEARS understand or sympathize with most working mothers. Not all moms enjoy the luxury of being a stay-at-home mom with a rich husband, so she doesn't have to work. So she doesn't have that weight on her shoulders of whether they'll eat tonight or not, or whether she'll have to choose between buying food or being able to afford a trip to the emergency room with a sick or injured child. She's never had to face life like that. When you wonder if you'll be able to support a baby on the way, and don't know how you'll do it if you still need that full-time job. People like her husband are responsible for hurting women, helping the walls close in on them, and denying them options and choices and even a simple safety net if their world turns upside down beyond their control.

I know she has health issues, but she'll never worry about being able to afford the best medical care. She'll have everything she needs and then some for the rest of her life. She won't have to worry about her sons - either being killed in some foreign war, OR how they will make ends meet in an increasingly shaky world, since wealthy hubby gave them each a nice multi-million-dollar starter fund. She'll never know that sense of deep insecurity and fear, or the desperation every time the phone rings that it's probably a bill collector, or that the car will disappear overnight because it was finally repossessed, or that the bank's about to foreclose on the one little home she has. Her biggest concern I suppose was pretty much which Cadillac to drive the kid to the doctor. And if she had concerns for herself - the one that NEVER plagued her was how she was going to stretch a meager family budget to feed seven people every night and keep the wolves away from the door.

It's not even close. Certainly raising five boys had to be hard work. My mother-in-law had three, and it drove her to drink. I have seven or eight boys around the house on a regular basis because of my son's band, and that can be NUTS. No one's denying motherhood is hard, even with loads of money. But having loads of money MAKES A DIFFERENCE. A HUGE difference! It eases an AWFUL LOT of pain and suffering.

[Namvet67]

7. Great post.....when you have a maid , a cook , and a gardener...........

and you're not on the set of a Pink Panther movie being interviewed by Clousseau, then you're absolutely out of touch with the rest of us. Did I forget the Bee-Keeper?

[calimary]

14. AND, if you're "sick all the time" like I've heard people say about ann romney -

WHEN, indeed, was it EVER true for her that she was deeply fearful that getting treatment for her illnesses would bankrupt her family? Deny them the college education they were all saving for? Force the foreclosure on their home because the medical bills consumed every last bit of their savings and their income and since she was sick she couldn't work so there went her salary that would have offset some of the logarithmically-increasing expenses.

ann romney didn't have to worry about ANY of that. I'm amazed at how many comments I'm reading, to some of these stories, where women not just here but elsewhere talk about having to go back to work within days of a radical mastectomy, while the wound was still oozing, with no day care, and fearful that her recent illness and hospitalization would result in the cancellation of her insurance policy, or sky-high rate increases that she wouldn't be able to afford?

No ann, I don't have ANY sympathy for you. And I HARDLY think you've EVER been overworked. When you have that kind of cushion to fall back on, where you never feel the hard floor, you should STFU and be DAMN grateful. And maybe tithe more than the minimum.

[no_hypocrisy]

8. My mother was a stay-at-home mother.

And she couldn't have advised my father on the life of a working mother despite having two degrees. Because she didn't work.

She had no personal experience with trying to getting her family roused early enough in the morning, getting coffee and breakfast ready, checking to make sure she had enough cash for the day, remembering to take the bills with her at work to mail on time, remembering if she filled up the car the night before in order to get to work, getting caught in traffic en route to work, trying to do the 9-5 bit (without sexual harassment, coworker incompetence, superior incompetence, fear of surprise termination, etc.), taking calls from the kids while trying to her job, worrying about the kids being alone before she gets home, having to shop for dinner after getting stuck in traffic on the commute home, and so on. And finally, finding out there isn't enough money to pay the car insurance on time after dinner.

Mothers work. Just not the same experience as working mothers.

[KG]

10. another obama bashing thread - oh, wait...

[KharmaTrain]

11. Mittens Hiding Under Her Skirt...

He's been doing that for a while. Anytime there's a question about a woman's issue now, Millard trots out his wife and hides. It's as if since he's married and she happens to have indoor plumbing that he is innoculated from being "anti-woman". Pretty cowardly and lame...considering he's gone on record against women's issues across the board. In his "etch-a-sketch" attempt to make the great unhinged love him he's embraced every draconian anti-woman bill and then goes and hides under the Mrs. skirt when he's called on it. Rosen tried to pull him out from underneath but walked into a coordinated shitstorm that is meant now to protect Mittens from further damage. Let's see how long he is able to continue to hide...

[betharina]

12. ann romney is a lady of the manor,

NOT a stay-at-home mom.

[dmkinsey]

13. No rules

This episode drives home the point, again, that there are no rules when engaging the Republicans. They don't care about consistency. They have no use for logic. Hypocrisy is their normal condition.
None of that matters because they don't care and they are never called on any of it.

I conclude that it's pointless to try to devise a strategy for winning an argument with the Republicans. They're like zombies, they just keep moving forward, inexorably destroying everything that's good, right and just.

Finally, I think the only way to engage them is to attack constantly. If we're apologizing, if we're playing defense then we're losing.

There are no Marquis of Queensbury rules. It's a knife fight.

[truebrit71]

15. Of course she was..but as usual the presstitutes in the M$M twisted it around...

...and made it sound as though she'd said something she hadn't, and then demanded she apologize for it...

Jeebus aitch on a bike, I wish just FUCKING ONCE a Dem operative when faced with this sort of shit would stand their ground...Just ONCE...

And Axelrod is welcome to kiss my ass...the admin is supposed to be smarter than falling into that sort of false equivalency, but instead they had to join the pile-on without realizing they were being played...

[sabrina 1]

16. 'I wish just FUCKING ONCE a Dem operative when faced with this sort of shit would stand their ground

...Just ONCE..."

The Dem Leadership have proven, over and over again that when Republicans jump on something pretending to be outraged, they will jump, faster than the blink of an eye, to attack the DEM whoever it may be, Shirley Sherrod, Van Jones, ACORN, Anthony Weiner, without even checking the sources of the faux outrage.

What I wish is that they would do the same to the deceptive, lying Republicans, that they would demand the same purity from Republicans when they have affairs or lie, or are known propagandists, that they are so quick to do to good Democrats.

I remember when ACORN was totally betrayed by Democrats and Breitbart et al were handed a victory, Bertha Lewis, who was the head of ACORN at the time, was so sad, not about Republicans, ACORN had withstood their attacks for 40 years, but about how Democrats aided and abetted them. She said after the vote to defund them, in spite of all the evidence showing how wrong Daryl Issa and his mob of co-conspirators were:

"To have liberals, moderates — a lot of Democrats — just be willing to throw us under the bus and wipe away 40 years of working for poor people in this country without due process…" said Lewis. "

It was shameful. Total capitulation to the worst people in this country. They should never, ever be given one iota of credibility. But sadly, today's 'New Democrats' seem to have a great desire to appease these anti-Democratic morons for some reason.

[jwirr]

17. Very good.