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| Democratic Strategist Hilary Rosen (public domain photo) |
Presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, in an effort to regain some lost ground with women voters who have been turned off by attacks on reproductive choice waged by his misogynistic party, said earlier this week that his wife Ann keeps him informed about women's economic concerns.
This was yet another feeble attempt by the bazillionaire/former Massachusetts governor to show the commoners that he feels their pain during these difficult economic times. Gotta give the guy an A for effort, even if nobody is buying the crap he's selling.
Enter talking head/Democratic strategist/out lesbian, Hilary Rosen, who set the 24/7 news cycle and the interwebs ablaze when said told CNN's Thursday morning viewers that Ann Romney,
"has never worked a day in her life".
In response, Mrs. Romney made a statement pointing out that she has raised five sons and that being a stay-at-home mom is, in fact, hard work. From this point it got uglier and uglier, as each camp fired salvo after ridiculous salvo and the story took on a life of its own.
Rush Limbaugh weighed in, spending the majority of his three-hour show on a tirade about liberals driving a wedge between working and nonworking mothers:
Via Politico:
"This is big because it’s such a teachable moment. It’s such an illustration of who these people are, the left. It’s such an illustration of phonies of feminism. It is an illustration of the absolute hostility that the left has for women who stay at home."
Naturally, Sarah Palin, the Fox "News" answer to Snooki, offered her own bumper sticker opinion, saying Rosen's comments had "wakened the Mamma Grizzlies". Mamma Grizzlies sure do sleep a lot.
Coming to Rosen's defense is her former partner and power lesbian, Elizabeth Birch, former executive director of The Human Rights Campaign. Birch, who has two children with Rosen,
wrote a piece for the Huffington Post Friday morning, where she wrote in part,
"There is something just wrong with people twisting concerns for women and jobs into mom-on-mom conflict".
Really, Liz? I hope that's what you told your ex-wife as you were picking up/dropping off the kids last night, because that's exactly what she did.
It strikes me as the ultimate hypocrisy that two women, Rosen and Birch, who value and defend the right of women to make their own reproductive choices, to have the right to marry the one they love and raise their children as they see fit could be so disrespectful of a woman who exercised her own right to do the exact same thing.
According to Rosen, freedom of choice is only worthy of respect and protection when we all make the same choices. If you ask me, that sounds more like a conservative Republican mindset than a liberal Democrat one. It's getting so you can't tell them apart any more.
Women work for the same reasons men work, to support themselves and their families. Most working moms don't have much of a choice in the matter. If a woman, or a man, is fortunate enough to have a spouse that makes a good enough salary that she/he can be the primary caregiver for their kids, isn't that a good thing? Isn't it better than turning them over to a stranger to raise?
For the average married working mother, who is typically just getting by financially, when you factor in the cost of childcare, it's often less expensive for her to not work outside the home.
But aside from all of this, as a gay man I have to ask, do we really need two prominent members of the LGBT community jumping into the War On Women and dragging the rest of us along with them? It's bad enough that Rosen's insensitive comments have made the Democrats look bad, but the antigay forces out there have already started using this incident to bolster their arguments that gays are a threat to traditional families.
Think Progress reports that Bill Donohue of the Catholic League sent out the following tweet on Thursday morning:
@CatholicLeague: Lesbian Dem Hilary Rosen tells Ann Romney she never worked a day in her life. Unlike Rosen, who had to adopt kids, Ann raised 5 of her own.
Naturally, TP's Zack Ford, who reported on this, took the bait and made much of Donohue's implication that Rosen's children and parental credentials were somehow less than Romney's because her kids are adopted and the pissing contest goes on and on. So much for thinking and for progress.
Before the end of the day, Rosen shot off an unconvincing "my bad", saying, "I apologize to Ann Romney and anyone else who was offended. Let's declare peace in this phony war and go back to focus on the substance."
Too late, Hil. That horse is out of the barn, has jumped the fence and is rolling around in the pig slop.
The Republican War on Women is very real. The LGBT community has steadfastly fought alongside our straight and gay sisters to defeat every draconian attempt made by Republicans nationwide to strip away women's reproductive rights, including the demeaning and unwarranted, state-sanctioned rape known as Trans-vaginal Ultrasound, proposed by legislators in Virginia and other states as a means of intimidating women who seek legal abortions.
Ms. Rosen, you have trivialized political misogyny by participating in it and you've dragged your party and the LGBT community into the mud with you. You should be ashamed of yourself.
