From Pine View Farm

The Entitlement Society 4

At Philly dot com, Ronnie Polaneczky explains why she was unable to write a cutesy-poo column about the debates and women in binders:

What Romney has had from birth, and what he takes for granted, is a level of well-being that 99 percent of Americans will never know. His wealth has allowed him to put miles of distance between himself and the potential for disaster. And his stunning lack of empathy blinds him to those who aren’t so fortunate.

He and his ilk will never lose sleep at night worrying how to pay the heating bill.

(snip)

Romney and his campmates believe that this brand of well-being is attainable for anyone who will just work hard enough for it.

Except then there would be no schoolteachers, who work hard – but at middling wages. Ditto for cops, and soldiers, and firefighters, and medics, and office workers, and cashiers, and waiters, and social workers, and bus drivers, and lab techs, and just about every kind of worker whose sweat contributes to and supports a greater whole called America.

We can’t all run Bain Capital. If we did, who would tend to Romney’s houses? Bus the tables at his fundraisers? Clean out the stalls where his wife keeps her horses? Or fix the tires on her Cadillacs when they go flat?

What Romney has done, by dishonoring the 47 percent – and forgetting the 99 percent – is dishonor work that he himself would never do. And in doing so, he dishonors those who do it.

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4 comments

  1. George Smith

    October 23, 2012 at 12:01 pm

    And the race is a dead heat because half of America — 95 percent of all white people, apparently, think that’s cool. Depressing. It occurs to me that things are so screwed up and split Mitt Romney could strangle someone’s pet onstage and still have an even chance at election. I’m now inclined to look for the new book that makes the argument the country needs to split and let the old confederate states go as a separate nation to move forward.

     
  2. Frank

    October 23, 2012 at 12:17 pm

    The Dixiecrats finally went national. 

     
  3. George Smith

    October 23, 2012 at 1:20 pm

    Huh, after writing the line about Romney strangling someone’s pet I went to Taibbi’s blog and he had written Mitt had “f—ked the dog” in the debate but still wasn’t emphatically positive it had lost him the election. That’s twice he’s made a laughingstock of himself on national tv. Do you think it was enough?   

     
  4. Frank

    October 23, 2012 at 1:51 pm

    I hope it’s enough, but I fear underestimating the power of hate.  

    He’s got a lock on the bigot vote, and that’s a hefty chunk.  

    I think that, for many white American men, race trumps everything, because it’s the only thing they have and they aren’t giving it up.  

    See Daniel Bell on status anxiety.

    Incidently, Gus Grissom did not actually say, “Screwed the pooch.” That was a polite rephrasing . . . .