Vague & Vacuous

I was out running errands the other day and while on the way back to my car I noticed a political bumper sticker. It was for some candidate for Congress, but what grabbed my attention was the tagline.

"Less Government. More Prosperity."

My first thought was that it was obviously a Republican. My second was that this was just the kind of stupid drivel that we've come to expect from our elections. Fourth grade level, useless bullet points that grab voters' attention, yet are absolutely without substance.

"Less Government" is one of those lines that is a conservative staple. It fits the narrative that the government, especially the federal government, is only good at wasting money. Like most catchy political phrases, it strikes its target audience as clear and concise, yet is actually uselessly vague. What the hell does that phrase even mean, anyway? What do you want less of? It's real easy to moan about the evils of government and how bad it is, but when you start to really pin things down, it becomes surprisingly complicated. Well, we can't get rid of the military. If nothing else, it's one of the few categories where America still holds the top spot! Not to mention that it's undeniable that we all "support the troops." Not enough to take care of them when they come home, sometimes badly wounded, or to stop sending them off for deployment after deployment in locations most Americans couldn't care less about, but we'll elbow each other in the ribs to buy them a beer! And, of course, politicians can't call for a reduction without risking being labeled as weak. So the Pentagon is safe.

How about those fascists at the EPA or FDA, with their fixation on keeping our food, air and water at least reasonably safe? I think we can all agree that we need less testing of new drugs or regulations on what chemicals can be dumped in our rivers, right? Anyone? Okay, hmmm. I got it, Medicare! Do we really want to waste money on healthcare for the elderly? They've been here a while, isn't it time to spend on ourselves instead? Okay, maybe not. National Park Service, maybe? They're all just tree hugging socialists, anyway. Then again, it might be nice to have a few areas that can't be used for mining, shopping malls or another Marriott. I guess "less government" isn't so clear a dictate when looked at in detail.

What about "More Prosperity"? Now that is something we can agree on, eh? Hell, yes! I demand more prosperity! It's time we marched out there and let our politicians know that we won't stand for the current level of prosperity any longer. They just need to fix that. You know, just . . . you know, get out there and . . .  fix it! How? Uh, well . . . (crickets chirp happily in the distance). To be blunt, "more prosperity" is about as ignorant as McCain's "Country First" slogan from '08. As if anyone ever called for country second or less prosperity! Slogans like this should be taken almost as seriously as those ads for magic diet pills that melt the fat right off while you watch TV. And yet, there they are, plastered everywhere as if they were universal truths.

But what is so infuriating is that empty platitudes like these actually seem to work! Come on people, wake up. Our political system has degenerated to the point where our politicians are beginning to feel comfortable uttering easily disprovable, bald faced lies on national television. Not just exaggerating or stretching things, but actually declaring in bold language the political equivalent of 2+2=5! And they get uproarious applause. Why? Because they are telling their supporters exactly what they want to hear. And politicians have learned that reinforcing our own prejudices, misconceptions and fears is way easier and more effective than telling the truth.  The truth can be inconvenient and data has an annoying habit of not fitting a canned narrative, but lies fit every single time.

Much of the blame for this state of affairs lays at the feet of the media. In the olden days of TV news, it was just the three major networks and their news departments were not there to make money. Actually they weren't expected to be profitable. They were more in the way of a public service. Now we have news and comment oozing out of every TV, newspaper, computer, tablet and phone without end, but it's all about selling ad space. It's all about entertainment and making the viewers feel better about themselves so they'll buy more product. Each political party picks their preferred outlets and pundits, then ignores everyone else. A grand echo chamber, where nobody is asked tough questions because everyone involved is on the same team. If not politically so, then at least they are teamed up in feeding their viewers acceptable ideas that won't upset them. Instead of pointing out the facts, allowing us to decide based on objective data, it's about keeping the viewers happy and thus the sponsors happy. We can't even agree on the basic facts any more, so I can't imagine how we can ever work together to solve the very real and pressing problems we face.

The bottom line is that we aren't really as far apart as it usually seems. If we could dispense with the easy slogans and let go of our reflexive hatred, I think Americans of all views could make this work. But we are not just fighting our own habitual responses. It's also a struggle against all the forces out there that benefit from the conflict. The media that is trying to sell ad space. Those in positions of influence who are more focused on their own personal or business success rather than the overall success of the nation. And also the politicians whose overriding concern is reelection and keeping their donors happy. What's the solution? Question those you support as well as those you oppose. Listen to both sides, even when you don't want to. If someone you like says something that seems at all odd, look into it. Even if you generally trust a certain source of information, that doesn't mean they are always right or that they don't have an agenda. The one way we can pull out of this partisan nose-dive is for people on both sides to call out the lunacy in their own party. Stupid is still stupid, no matter who says it or what channel it's on.

Too Much Ad'ing

I've just about had it with online ads. I realize that it's the only way for a lot of websites to make money and it's certainly the only reason a social networking site like Facebook is supposedly worth enough to create an IPO feeding frenzy. I'm not complaining about ads in general as they are necessary and, once in a blue moon, even useful. But the madness has to stop! There are only so many places to post, staple, tape or bury ads while still maintaining a page's basic usefulness. I think we've now passed that point of sanity and moved into the land of marketing chaos.

I remember the first moment things were getting out of control. I'm sitting there, reading a post somewhere about something and, like everyone who spends a lot of time online, I'm quick to notice hyperlinks. So, there I am, reading along and I notice a blue, underlined word and out of reflex I hover the pointer over it, intending to see what the link points to. Before I can even think about actually clicking it, a big window pops up with some advertisement that vaguely relates to the highlighted word! Only afterwards did I notice the double-underline that seems to denote these 'ad mines' that are deployed all over the place nowadays.  Next came the 'mouse trap' ads that lurk innocently along the margins just waiting for an unwary mouse pointer to wander close and then they pounce, opening up a big, expanded ad across a third of the web page. These also took me by surprise the first time. It only takes a little sloppy mouse work in the wrong place to yank you out of whatever you were doing. Sometimes you're lucky and the ad will snap back when you drag your pointer back to neutral ground, but often you have to find the ghostly little 'X' in one corner or the other of the ad to make it go away. So now, not only do I have to avoid passing the pointer over double underlined words scattered throughout most of the articles I read, but I also have to carefully circumnavigate the entire ad section to avoid accidentally tripping one of them as well. Makes for a pleasant reading experience, as you can imagine.

But that's just the tip of the proverbial iceberg! It's no longer unusual for a page to contain ads with embedded movies. And not just movies you can choose to play if you happen to be interested in the product. I'm talking movies that just autostart as soon as the page loads. At least so far, most run without sound unless you click on it. Thank Gaia for small favors! But some just start blaring away at whatever volume your computer happens to be set to. Or maybe, as I've run into recently, the page loads normally, but after a second it darkens and a movie will open in the middle of the page and start playing.  In some cases you can't even close the ad till it plays a certain length of time, thus holding the contents of the page hostage. Once you get to the page though, it's still not clear sailing. Huffington Post, for example, has a really annoying ad strategy. Sporadically they will have a huge banner across the very top of the page, usually for something like a big movie opening. So far so good, as you can just scroll down and go about your business. But not so fast!  Just about the time you see an article you might want to read . . . presto, the ad retracts and the entire page slides upwards, taking what you were reading with it. That one is particularly infuriating and I've gotten so I just let the page load and wait 30 seconds or so till all the shifting is done before actually looking at anything. It's a stupid way to do it, as it just annoys people which is not generally a good marketing tool.

Even if you avoid the movies, mouse traps, ad mines and timed animations, the advertisers have still more tricks for you. In recent years I've seen more of the in-line, stealth ads sneaking in. As odd as it may sound to combine 'stealth' and 'ad' in the same description, it fits. These ads are carefully placed throughout the text of the article and sometimes even look, at a glance anyway, like they are part of it.  There will be an extra line or two and a very low key 'sponsor' note, but usually not enough to be obvious till you start to read it and wonder why the article on Greece's money troubles seems to now be advising you on mortgage opportunities! Imagine reading Moby Dick only to stumble over ads for Holland America cruises and you get the idea.

This is by no means a comprehensive list of marketing tricks to be found in the wild, but they are some of the most invasive. And with the rise of Google and Facebook, among others, the ads we see are eerily targeted. I did some searches six months ago or so, for a laptop bag and I still see ads from one of the companies I visited popping up on all sorts of pages now. Sure I could clear all the browser cookies and probably give my stalkers the slip, briefly at least, but I find it annoying that I have to. I also find it annoying how long page load times have gotten for some sites due to the dozens of highly visual ads that frame, and sometimes infiltrate, the articles themselves. Some of these pages are, graphically speaking, 95% ads or more!

One other thing the online ad onslaught has brought us is 'click bait'. Articles that either exist almost entirely as a lure for readers or pages that are crafted so the article takes up the maximum amount of pages. The most obvious form of the lure strategy is to use an title that is usually somewhat, if not wildly misleading. We've all seen a title that grabbed us only to find out that it had little bearing on the actual story. But it got you to click on it, so the advertising god was appeased. The other appeasement trick is to create slide show 'articles' where you usually have a picture and maybe a short paragraph of text on each page. This often manifests in things like 'The Top 10 . . .' or '5 Ways to a better . . .' and other similar variations. More often than not you'll find these lists to be generally brainless. Filled with either obvious or highly subjective and inflammatory information. In any case, you are unlikely to get anything of substance from them. The web site itself however, will rack up huge number of page hits and thus, making itself look like a great place to advertise!

As I said, I know we can't get away from relying on ad revenues to fund our online world, but is it too much to ask to back it down to sane levels? I keep trying to imagine what things would be like if we applied the current online marketing strategies to our everyday lives. Imagine sidewalks, where every square was an advertising tile that lit up with targeted ads as you stepped on them. Imagine phone calls with brief pauses in conversation so we could hear a word from our sponsors based on the current topic of discussion. Imagine TV shows where the characters turn to the camera unexpectedly to extol the virtues of the new Subaru WRX they just bought. Wait a sec! That one I've already seen. The SciFi, er . . . I mean SyFy channel tried that a few years ago with their original series Eureka. It was a horrible thing to see, and they seemed to realize that quickly as the practice ceased after a few episodes. The point is that I think we've already hit the saturation point with online ads. I regularly find myself thinking, "I will NEVER buy anything from this company", after encountering some of the more egregious marketing traps. I'm sure I'm not the only one who is reticent to click ads at all. I mean, who wants to be stalked by some company you were vaguely curious about for ten seconds one day? Who wants to encourage strategies that annoy the hell out of you? The marketing brain trust needs to remember that there is a fine line between enticing us with products and just generally pissing us off.

Who Do You Trust?

What is it about conservatives? I'm constantly running into these weird conflicting narratives. Ideologies that seem to be in complete opposition to each other. One of the strangest is the Government vs. Private debate. It's no secret that it's accepted conservative dogma that the government is usually wrong and that it does more harm than good. Basically an overall distrust of government involvement, sometimes elevated to an almost paranoid level. Yet the same people who can't say the word 'government' without spitting, seem to have utmost trust in the conduct of the private sector.

I recently commented on a story related to the EPA and ended up in a 'conversation' with someone who seemed to believe that the EPA was following some grand "Obama Doctrine" and "Imposing their societal designs on free and prosperous people, dictating how we live, controlling our every movement in our personal life." Yet, on the other hand, "the Free markets are a wonder and transform society into a prosperous, innovative, imaginative society."  So while the government is bad and untrustworthy, trying to control our every movement, the free market is the panacea from which all good comes. At least according to more than a few conservatives.

Can they actually be completely missing the problem with this argument? Big Government is bad, yet Big Business isn't? Why is Exxon any more trustworthy than Congress? What makes General Electric more noble and honest? I think it goes back to my theory that perception is 9/10 of reality. We're bombarded by all the stupidity, the wastefulness and the corruption of our government on a continual basis. The news trumpets it and comedians mine it for laughter. But with big business, it's different. Unlike the President, the Speaker of the House or the Senate Majority Leader, most of us have no clue who's heading up Bank of America or Wells Fargo. Go up to any random person on the street and ask them their thoughts on Brian Moynihan, Jamie Dimon or Vikram Pandit and note the blank expressions.  Yet these men run the top three financial institutions in the country (B of A, JP Morgan Chase & Citi Group respectively) with combined assets approaching six and a half trillion dollars!  Functionally, these are three of the most powerful people in America, yet few even recognize their names. Add to that the fact that when a business does something wrong you rarely hear anything about it. Just about every financial firm has been fined repeatedly, even over just the last few years, for wrongdoing and outright fraud, yet they are usually able to finagle a simple fine without actually admitting any wrongdoing. This is something that boggles my mind, actually. And the fine is usually far less than what the company made by using those shady practices in the first place, thus providing no incentive to do the right thing in the future.

So naturally, we perceive business as being more upstanding, because Conan O'Brian hasn't done many jokes about Goldman Sachs latest $22 million fine. You see the joke is that they conspired to  . . . never mind, it's not really that funny actually. I understand that we like to look up at these money making machines in awe, but simply being successful doesn't make you trustworthy or moral. In fact, I've been lectured on more than one occasion by someone telling me that I shouldn't expect corporations to make moral decisions! So if they can't be expected to do the right thing for anyone but themselves, then why would you extend them such trust? The only thing Citi Group can be trusted to do, is make money. And it's that very laser focus on profit, above all else,  that should inspire extra oversight and not extra latitude.

Look, I don't have any special trust in government but contrary to the conservative narrative, government does do some things right. Scenic gems like Yosemite and the Grand Canyon are protected and remain open to any American to enjoy, without being draped in mansions and sprawling resorts. Criminal plots are stopped and their perpetrators removed from the streets by the FBI and Federal Marshals every day.  American seniors are able to get basic health insurance, rather than facing the gauntlet of private providers, because of Medicare. Rivers don't generally catch fire anymore and companies can't release known toxins into the atmosphere since the EPA was signed into being by that liberal icon Richard Nixon. We have few outbreaks of food born illness since the FDA started setting standards for food preparation, and when they do occur they are quickly tracked to the source and dealt with.

Government can be overbearing. It can be wasteful. It can be corrupt, but it also performs many services that we all take for granted. The free market also provides many invaluable services to individuals and the country at large, but it is also willing to ignore the common good and long term effects of their activities in the quest for profit. Neither is wholly good or wholly bad and neither can be trusted to operate without supervision. The Founders knew that about government and that's why they constructed the American system with interlocking checks and balances. We have to stay vigilant and do the same with big business, because they represent just as much of a danger to the nation as an overbearing federal government.

NC Amendment 1

I currently reside in North Carolina and today I am furious with the people of this state. On Tuesday, elections were held. Mostly political primaries for various state and federal positions, but there was one other item nestled on the back of my ballot. It was a vote on a state constitutional amendment that was touted by its supporters as protecting traditional marriage. Primarily it was aimed as outlawing gay marriage, but that was not all it did.

The most prominent part of this amendment would ban gay marriage by using the now familiar blather about "defining marriage as between a man and a woman." This wasn't the only thing it did, but we'll get to that shortly. One of many things about this amendment that is idiotic, goes to the fact that gay marriage is already illegal by law in the state of NC. Which begs the question of why there needed to be an amendment to the state constitution to double secret probation ban it? Is that like installing a second deadbolt to give extra protection from the rampaging horde of homosexuals who are coming to make you marry them?

I will never understand this. Oh, I get why homosexuality makes some uncomfortable. That's a no-brainer! It's different and doesn't fit our Hollywood spun fantasies of romance and marriage. But so what? A lot of things weren't 'normal' until they were. And at the end of the day, this had very little to do with heterosexual couples. The gay community isn't trying to force straight people to be gay! Allowing gay marriage will have no effect on your straight relationship at all. This isn't really about preserving the so called "tradition of marriage". A tradition that at times, not so far in the past, was as much about property, alliances and preserving the family name as any modern idea of romance. That's right, this noble tradition also brings with it a history of female subjugation too. But we prefer to forget those inconvenient facts, don't we?

This whole issue has less to do with preserving some fantasy ideal of marriage and more to do with ostracizing people you don't like or that make you feel uncomfortable. I understand that homosexuality can be uncomfortable to some and even offensive. But so frelling what?! There are all sorts of things that offend me, including that sanctimonious, glassy eyed, smiling blonde bobblehead who I watched babble gleefully about the passage of Amendment 1 Tuesday night. But, while the idea of administering therapeutic shock therapy did flit through my mind, I never thought that I should fight to outlaw her right to stand there and spout idiotic statements. You see I have this crazy idea that all Americans are created equal and that they are endowed with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Radical, I know. Come to think of it, I must have read that somewhere.

But, as I hinted at earlier, this amendment was more far reaching than just continuing to treat gay Americans as less worthy. It also contained language that I doubt many who voted for it even looked at. They just heard that it banned gay marriage and in their rush to limit the rights of their fellow citizens they failed to notice what else its passage would do.  But don't listen to me. Here's an excerpt from a paper on the potential legal impact of this amendment written by four professors from the UNC School of Law. Emphasis is mine.

"Taken as a whole, the bill’s language is sufficiently vague, and its scope significantly unclear, that it would enmesh our courts in years of litigation to untangle its appropriate meaning. Moreover the eventual result of judicial interpretation of the Amendment would be uncertain. It could, however, be interpreted to upend completely the very minimal legal rights, obligations, and protections now available to unmarried couples, whether same-sex or opposite-sex."

Such as . . .

"The Amendment could prevent courts from enforcing private agreements between unmarried couples, and end-of-life arrangements, such as wills, trusts and powers of attorney executed by unmarried couples; unsettle current custody law; invalidate rights and protections currently provided to unmarried couples under North Carolina’s domestic violence laws; undercut municipalities’ decisions to recognize domestic partnerships and undermine private employers’ efforts to attract top employees to North Carolina by providing employee benefits to domestic partners. It certainly will spur litigation, discourage same-sex and opposite-sex unmarried couples from living and working in North Carolina"

So congratulations North Carolina! Not only have you redundantly banned gay marriage, but you have likely stripped the legal rights and protections from heterosexual unmarried couples as well! Do you feel proud and more complete as a human being now that you have not just kept in place restrictions on those icky gay people but also removed protections from ALL unmarried couples? What other group can you think of to strip of rights? Anyone . . . Anyone?

A Tale of Two Movies

About a month ago I was looking for something to watch one evening and found myself scrolling through the PPV movie listing. I ended up choosing the 2011, big budget re-make of 'The Three Musketeers'. It follows at least ten other big screen adaptations of the original novel, stretching back to the early days of film. Not too surprising, since the excellent book by Alexandre Dumas has everything a moviegoer could want in a film; adventure, action, heroes, villains, honor, suspense, cloak & dagger politics (with real daggers!) and even a touch of romance. Now I'd seen the previews for this rendition before its release and had been a little leery of what looked like some over the top FX and stunt work, but thought, "why not? It's only $5."

It became obvious, less than two minutes into the very first scene that a mistake had been made. And by mistake, I mean the fact that the script had not been burned immediately thus saving us all from a foolish waste of time and money. To say the film was a disaster would be an understatement. But it wasn't just the stupid plot points and dialogue, it was the obvious attempt to take the core story and make it 'bigger' and 'bolder' so it could match recent action adventures like the Mission Impossible franchise. In fact, it felt like MI was exactly what they were trying to emulate. The fancy gadgets, many patently impossible for the 17th Century, the gratuitous use of elaborate slow motion action sequences and the 'elite team saves the world' plot all come straight out of the 21st century action playbook. Ironically, all the attempts to 'update' the production did nothing but destroy the things that made The Three Musketeers such a great story. I felt none of the brotherly camaraderie that marked the original story. It was just too contrived and too slick to allow any serious emotion to creep in. Without that, it's just hollow and mechanical.

I can't really lay too much blame on the actors, either. I'd say that it was actually pretty well cast, for the most part. But no matter the actor's skills, they couldn't make bad dialogue work or make the unexpectedly contemporary language and phrasing less jarring. It was as if the screenwriters randomly forgot in what time period the film was taking place and each time it occurred I was yanked out of the moment. Did Cardinal Richelieu just say, "yep"?! I lay the blame for this embarrassment solely at the feet of the screenwriters and the director. Suffice it to say that it was one of the worst, big budget Hollywood productions I've ever seen. I've seen worse films, but those were all 'B' movies so at least I wasn't surprised.

Contrast this disaster with, in my opinion, the best Three Musketeers adaptation, Richard Lester's two part, star studded production from 1973-74. Its cast list included Charlton Heston, Christopher Lee, Oliver Reed, Raquel Welch, Michael York, Faye Dunaway, Richard Chamberlain and others. It holds surprisingly close to the original text, hence the need for two parts which were dubbed 'The Three Musketeers' and 'The Four Musketeers'. They didn't try to make the time period more glamorous than it was, letting you see the grittiness of early 1600s Paris. It also eschewed attempts to update the story to fit modern standards and instead let you see the myopia and narcissism of the French and British aristocracy contrasted with the other levels of French society from servant to soldier to spy to Cardinal and King. It also had some top notch sword play. Not the silly, dainty slapping of blades, but real brawls. Fights that utilized numerous styles that transcended simple fencing. Put simply, it felt authentic.

What really stands out about the 70's production, in comparison to the 2011 version, is that it's not trying to be more than it is. There are no gratuitous explosions or superhuman feats. The Musketeers were master swordsmen to be sure, but they got injured and they fought dirty. The '70's films focused heavily on the core story of protecting the Queen from the Cardinal's machinations and D'Artagnon's ongoing attempts to protect his love, Constance, from Milady's revenge. The clash of England vs. France was an important but tertiary plot. Contrast that with the 2011 version's grandiose theme of laughingly unbelievable airborne DaVinci war machines and you see a prime example of one of Hollywood's biggest issues of late. If the movie is classified as 'Action', then it has to be huge and filled with pyrotechnics and special effects. The heroes have to be almost invincible and capable of inhuman feats. And worst of all, the plot and dialogue are all but an afterthought. I can't count the number of films I've seen that were mediocre, but that could have been great if they had really made an effort on the plot. Instead far too many filmmakers seem fine with 'good enough'.

I don't know if the situation is worse now than 30 years ago, but it seems that way. I think the late '80s and early 90's marked the beginning of the trend and the mastering of computer effects in the early 2000s only cemented the bad practices. Instead of the special effects and stunts adding flavor to the film, too often nowadays they are the film. I don't suppose this is likely to change anytime soon. At least not as long as these monstrosities generally make money. But it is a sad state of affairs to see so many action films become little more than big budget B movies.

False Equivalence

Several weeks ago Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam allowed an education bill to pass into law without his signature. This law, often referred to by critics as the 'Monkey Bill' in reference to the 1925 'Scopes Monkey Trial,' allows the discussion of alternative scientific ideas in classrooms. On the surface, this seems innocuous and perhaps even pointless to enact as law, but the one thing it does is open the door just a crack to challenge scientific theories such as evolution and climate change.

Here's an excerpt from the Bill Summary: "This bill prohibits the state board of education and any public elementary or secondary school governing authority, director of schools, school system administrator, or principal or administrator from prohibiting any teacher in a public school system of this state from helping students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories covered in the course being taught, such as evolution and global warming."

Don't get me wrong, I am all for discussion and debate in general, even more so in an academic setting. But I don't think grade school science class is the place for such free wheeling, anything goes exchanges. School, particularly grade school, is there to, as quickly and efficiently as possible, build up a student's basic foundational knowledge of the currently accepted theories and practices. With this foundation they can then bound off in whatever direction life and their own imagination takes them. This includes challenging the validity of the accepted wisdom. My main problem with this law is that by saying it's OK to debate pretty much any idea in class, it quietly creates a false equivalency between supported scientific theories and faith based beliefs.

Look, we don't know everything and sometimes our reality gets turned upside down with new discoveries, but you can't teach on the basis of 'might' or 'could'. You go with what, so far, seems to be correct and encourage kids to always question and evaluate based on new data. Science is about what can be supported by data and observation and is also repeatable. It is not about belief or faith. And don't forget that teaching evolution does not preclude students considering other ideas, but you don't start students off by telling them any crackpot idea is as valid as a theory put forward by decades of scientific study! If someone wants to believe in creationism or its modern cousin, intelligent design, that's their right. But that is no basis for grade school science class! What's next? Do we spend hours of limited class time on an alternate explanation for why we don't fall off a spherical stellar body? This is just another attempt to artificially elevate unsupported beliefs, usually theological based, to the level of science. They are not the same thing, no matter how much some wish it were so.

Message Obscured

On Wednesday, Democratic Strategist and DNC adviser Hilary Rosen set off an uproar with a comment about Mitt Romney's wife Anne. In an interview with Anderson Cooper on CNN, talking about the GOP's recent issues with women voters, Rosen was quoted as saying, "Guess what, his wife has actually never worked a day in her life.” This prompted Anne Romney herself to dive onto Twitter to respond, “I made a choice to stay home and raise five boys. Believe me, it was hard work." This was followed by the automatic and predictable avalanche of tweets, comments and press releases, with conservatives using the gaff to claim Democrats don't respect Mothers and liberals falling all over each other in an attempt to distance themselves from Rosen.

There is no doubt that the sentence, taken in isolation, came off as insulting to stay at home moms, but let's just pause for a moment and take a deep, cleansing breath. Before we pile on, perhaps it would be prudent to review the entire relevant section of that interview. Rosen was speaking about Mitt Romney and what she sees as his disconnect with women:

"What you have is, Mitt Romney running around the country saying, “Well, you know, my wife tells me that what women really care about are economic issues. And when I listen to my wife, that’s what I’m hearing."


Guess what: his wife has actually never worked a day in her life. She’s never really dealt with the kind 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 why do we worry about their future."

There are still some questionable wording choices, but taken in context I think her point comes across clearly. This is very much a case of the message being obscured by the wording. Yes, it came off as rather insulting, but the substance was entirely valid. Rosen was speaking in direct response to some of Romney's recent comments, such as this: "My wife has the occasion, as you know, to campaign on her own and also with me, and she reports to me regularly that the issue women care about most is the economy." Ruth Marcus, at the Washington Post put it well in an online article on Tuesday when she commented on this quote, "Note to candidate: Women aren’t a foreign country. You don’t need an interpreter to talk to them. Even if you’re not fluent in their language, they might appreciate if you gave it a try." Rosen was obviously following a similar path with her comments. The problem was that she was sloppy in how she put it and should have been more careful in choosing her words. After all, she does this for a living. But we shouldn't let that obscure the valid argument that she was making. And, make no mistake, it is valid.

Now I have nothing but respect for any parent, not to mention one who raises five kids, but this hardly makes her the avatar for the America woman!  It's not easy to forget that while Anne may have had to deal with a lot of the same parenting issues as average Americans, that was about the only thing she has in common with them.  In March, during a Fox News interview, Anne said, “We can be poor in spirit, and I don’t even consider myself wealthy, which is an interesting thing, it can be here today and gone tomorrow.” In fact it is "an interesting thing" since Mitt Romney's net worth is estimated to be in the $200 million range. That's wealthy by anyone's yard stick! To put that kind of number into some context, Romney makes more in a day than the average American makes all year. This isn't to say that being rich, even this level of rich, is wrong or something to be ashamed of, but both Romneys should at least be aware how much distance this puts between them and at least 99.5% of American voters. Romney's comments, making his wife his prime source on women's issues, just seems to show once again how removed from everyone else’s reality this family is.

Look, the Romneys are very wealthy and there is nothing wrong with that. But Mitt Romney is running for President of the entire United States, not just the top tier. And while nobody should expect him to have first hand experience with living paycheck to paycheck, we should expect him to make an effort to pay some attention. Yet just about every time he opens his mouth, out comes another line that illustrates a man who seemingly has no awareness of what most of the country is actually going through. Comments holding Anne Romney up as his window into the souls of women is more of the same. It shows once again a complete disconnect from the life most American's live. Rosen's error was in how she phrased it, but her underlying sentiment was dead on.  Anne Romney is about as in touch with the concerns of a single Mom in Arkansas as Mitt Romney is with an unemployed construction worker in Baton Rouge. And what's worse, they don't really seem to care.