I Said, “Pretend You’ve Got No Money.” She Just Laughed and Said “Oh, You’re So Funny.”

The Romneys are not like you and me.

[Ann] Romney alluded to the fact that not all women can stay at home saying, “I love the fact that there are women out there who don’t have a choice and they must go to work and they still have to raise the kids. Thank goodness that we value those people too. And sometimes life isn’t easy for any of us.”

You know who doesn’t love the fact that there are women (and men) who have no choice but to work, rather than staying home full-time? It’s those women (and men) who have no choice but to work. That’s not something they celebrate; that’s something they lament.

I don’t blame Ann, though, any more than I blame Mitt for his rich guy gaffes. Because the Romneys aren’t like you and me. They don’t know what it is to struggle to pay the bills. The worst they ever had to go through was deciding when to sell part of their hundreds of thousands of dollars in stock to pay the bills. Ann never had to work; she could have, but she had the option not to. For that matter, Mitt never had to struggle to get his foot in the door; he was the son of a cabinet secretary. He had his dad’s connections and his family name to trade on.

If the Romneys would show some sign of understanding that they’re tremendously lucky, I could accept it. If they showed any evidence that they realized that their experiences weren’t typical, that their experiences were not the same as most normal humans — well, I could accept that. I can understand them not knowing it from experience, but at least they’d show some hint that they had some empathy.

But they don’t. They simply haven’t spent time trying to imagine what it would be like to be poor or middle class. They have no understanding of what it means to struggle, not for a moment. They don’t get it. And far worse, they don’t want to.

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46 Responses to I Said, “Pretend You’ve Got No Money.” She Just Laughed and Said “Oh, You’re So Funny.”

  1. 1
    Robert says:

    Come now. Her language was very sloppy; she is not an experienced public speaker. She is clearly saying, not that she loves the fact that some women have no choice and have to work for pay AND inside the home, but the fact that “we” value the work of all women.

    I will grant you that the Romneys do not spend a lot of time talking about how lucky or exceptional their lives have been. At the same time, I think that if they did so, it would be viewed as pandering of a very low and dishonest sort. They’re rich, they’re who they are, they don’t apologize or explain.

  2. 2
    nm says:

    I don’t think that “show some sign of understanding that they’re tremendously lucky” really equates to “apologiz[ing] or explain[ing].” It equates to having what used to be known as “the common touch.” The Presidents Roosevelt (for two) had it — they didn’t apologize or explain their fortunes and good fortune, but they showed every sign of understanding that people who didn’t have their lives had, you know, different lives than they lived themselves. Ann Romney is probably being judged a tad too harshly for this one statement because of her husband’s repeated indications that he has no clue of how the other 99% live. But on the other hand, if she really knew much about the lives of women who “have no choice and have to work for pay AND inside the home,” she might not be so certain that most of those women are so certain that their work is valued as much as it ought to be.

  3. 3
    KellyK says:

    Pretty much what nm said. I could take her comment the way Robert takes it if there was an indication that “we” actually do value the work of all women. I think there’s lots of lip service, and a lot less actual valuing.

  4. 4
    mythago says:

    They’re rich, they’re who they are

    That’s rather the problem, isn’t it? One can be rich and still understand that not everybody is rich – in fact, almost nobody is. One can be rich and try to learn about the not-rich, so that one can sympathize with their problems and try to see how their experiences are different than one’s own. One doesn’t have to actually be a single mother struggling to raise children to understand that can be a difficult task.

    What I really don’t get is this: Romney, presumably, has an entire well-paid staff vetting what he says and trying to get him to say things that will help him win the election. And nonetheless, he manages to open his mouth and constantly say the equivalent of “Fuck you, I’ve got mine, Jack” pretty much nonstop. Are his aides that incompetent? Or is he just so mired in the idea that nobody below his income range matters that he just can’t help himself?

  5. 5
    Eytan Zweig says:

    What I really don’t get is this: Romney, presumably, has an entire well-paid staff vetting what he says and trying to get him to say things that will help him win the election. And nonetheless, he manages to open his mouth and constantly say the equivalent of “Fuck you, I’ve got mine, Jack” pretty much nonstop. Are his aides that incompetent? Or is he just so mired in the idea that nobody below his income range matters that he just can’t help himself?

    My impression, as an outsider to the American political process, is that there’s a large segment of the populace who very much want to hear exactly that message from their candidates. Why that would be, I have no idea.

  6. 6
    mythago says:

    Eytan, but I’d expect to hear that in code, or in the current mode of “Here’s a YouTube video of a candidate talking to [specific audience] and saying shit s/he though nobody but [specific audience] would ever hear.”

  7. 7
    Hugh says:

    “Romney, presumably, has an entire well-paid staff vetting what he says and trying to get him to say things that will help him win the election.”

    Who knows how many they -d0- manage to catch?

    Also, loving the Pulp reference in the title.

  8. 8
    Robert says:

    There are two parts to it.

    The first part: by and large, poor people don’t vote. And by and large, people of Mythago’s persuasion are extremely unlikely to end up in the Romney camp under any circumstance. So, while I don’t see him as quite as tin-eared as Mythago et al seem to believe him, to some extent it is rational for him to be somewhat dismissive of poor people’s life situations in a political sense.

    Being sensitive and Mythago-friendly, in other words, costs him fuck-the-poor votes while not winning him many, if any, love-the-poor votes.

    The second, related, part: a considerable fraction, possibly a majority, of the electorate has decided that government has a very limited role in fixing the problems of poor people. It can make sure the schools are open and that the roads through poor areas can support commerce and commuting, it can maybe even make sure that the old folks get a check every month, and doctor’s visits, so they don’t die and rot on the sidewalk. Beyond that, there isn’t much state power can do. It would be nice if we could pass a law or set a policy, and somehow have that make everyone’s life a cruise to Monaco, but we can’t. Poor people are very often, if not always, poor for meaningful reasons that are either within the control of the poor person, or not within anyone’s ability to control.

    And since the government can’t do anything much about it, we (I am pretty much in that camp, although always glad to see the exceptional cases where collective action can make a difference) don’t want to waste a lot of time having our politicos emote into the cameras about how they REALLY care and are REALLY gonna make a difference. Whether they care or not doesn’t matter, because they can’t make a difference. So let’s hear from them about the things where the government does make a difference, because that’s where we’re going to make our decisions about the candidates.

  9. 9
    Eytan Zweig says:

    Robert – yeah, I understand that (though I’m very much not in the camp of people you describe in #2). But I think part of the issue with the Romneys and their strange statements is that when you are Mitt Romney, basically everyone but a luxury-yachtful of people in America is a poor person. And they are not only aware of that, but seem to be quite happy to say that, too, without really trying to hide it.

  10. 10
    mythago says:

    Robert @8: I find it a little odd that you conflate “the not-rich” and “the poor”, which are very much not the same (except, perhaps, as Eytan observes, to Romney). Not-rich includes middle-class and working-class people, who do indeed vote.

    It’s certainly true that there is a swath of middle-class and working-class people who support “fuck the not-rich” positions, because they themselves idolize the rich on the theory that they, too, may be rich some day; but there are also plenty of not-rich, not-poor voters who really don’t think a New Gilded Age would be good for them or, really, anyone else.

    I also don’t see the argument that Romney is going to lose any votes whatsoever from his fellow plutocrats. What, they’re going to vote for Obama?

  11. 11
    nm says:

    I agree with mythago and Eytan about the problem with conflating “not rich” with “poor.” And I’d like to bring this back to the reason people are upset with Ann Romney about this: working-outside-the-home middle-class and working-class mothers are mostly very much aware that their outside-the-home work isn’t valued as much as that of men, and that their work as mothers isn’t getting a lot of support, either.

  12. 12
    Robert says:

    Sorry, I phrased myself poorly. There are poor people. Don’t vote, so who cares. Then there are middle-class people. They’re divided into two broad groups: Mythagos and Roberts. Romney can’t win the Mythagos, and doesn’t want to irritate the Roberts. So he doesn’t pander to her, and does to me, albeit in a negative-space kind of way; he isn’t going to make many friends in the middle class if he goes around saying everyone without their own plane is a lazy loser, so even if he believes that (I doubt it) he wouldn’t say it.

    Among rich people the division is probably, ironically, a bit more Mythago-heavy in outlook (lots of limousine liberals) but those folks vote their class interest more than their heartstrings, and its their money more than their relatively puny vote count that candidates are interested in.

    Barack and Michelle Obama, I should note, while hardly poor or middle-class anymore, both did interact much more extensively with those economic classes during their early lives than did either Romney. But this has translated mostly into them not being tin-eared about their language concerning the non-rich, not into big policy moves or strong rhetorical positions about how we gotta do more for the folks (some now-famous empty fatuities in his first campaign about Hope and Change and similar blather notwithstanding). Obama’s signature initiatives have been initiatives aimed at middle-class entitlements, not programs for the poor.

    I bring this up not to bash Obama (awwwww….no fun) but just to point out that it’s political calculus for both men, and their actions in office (and their wives’ rhetorical contributions) are pretty limited in utility as guides to what they really think of their poor brethren. For all we know from public behavior, Obama thinks the poor are a bunch of lazy sacks who should get jobs digging ditches while Romney goes around bleeding inside for the suffering of mankind. I seriously DOUBT it, but it’s not something we can completely dismiss on the basis of evidence; the evidence is of two pragmatic politicians competing for votes where the votes are to be found.

  13. 13
    Ampersand says:

    Obama’s signature initiatives have been initiatives aimed at middle-class entitlements, not programs for the poor.

    I wouldn’t say Obama is all about serving the poor, but I should point out that your statement is a false dichotomy; it’s possible for the same initiative to serve both poor and middle class Americans.

    For example, by far the biggest component of Obamacare is the expansion of Medicaid to cover more poor and low-income people, although the discussion of it has focused more on what it would do for middle class medical care.

  14. 14
    Ben Lehman says:

    Robert, your assertion about left-wing politics being positively correlated with wealth (“limousine liberals”) is simply wrong. Wealthier people are more Republican.

    This is a matter of populations, not individuals, of course. For instance, most of the celebrity left-wing figures we recognize are, themselves, quite rich. But that’s simply because celebrity figures are generally rich. The left-wing celebrities are much smaller proportion of their peer-group than, say, left-wing middle class people and left-wing poor people.

    In fact, not only is wealth strongly correlated with being a Republican partisan, but the effect is increasing over time.

    Citation: http://www.princeton.edu/~nmccarty/ineqpold.pdf

  15. 15
    VVV says:

    There is (rightly) a feeling of unfairness coming through loud and clear here.

    As a kid, I wondered why people ragged on “the rich” because they earned their money. Then I grew up and saw that wasn’t the case.

    Mitt Romney is an irritating windbag in my opinion, but there’s a possibility he earned some of his money via his work.

    That is absolutely not the case with his wife. 100% simply came from someone else.

    That has to be taken into consideration in thinking about “the rich” – those who didn’t earn any of it themselves are especially irritating. There really is a difference between a preening, condescending trust fund boy or lotto winner – and a person who ground it out over decades of hard work to finally get some wealth (I’m NOT saying that’s Mitt Romney). Attaching any importance to what the former type of people say is silly.

  16. 16
    mythago says:

    Robert, your assertion about left-wing politics being positively correlated with wealth (“limousine liberals”) is simply wrong. Wealthier people are more Republican.

    To the point that David Frum once devoted an entire essay to the paradox of wealthy liberals. Also, as Robert knows perfectly well, “limousine liberal” (what my father would have called a “Lincoln liberal”, back when candy bars cost a nickel) doesn’t mean a bleeding-heart liberal with money; it means the sort of liberal who is fine with talking the talk about the Right Thing To Do but who has no interest in walking the walk.

    The idea that middle-class people are devoted into “mythagos and Roberts” is silly, unless what you’re trying to do is illustrate Romney’s gender-gap problem; if it were true, then he wouldn’t need to pander to anyone at all, because everybody’s already made up their mind. Who he *does* want to pander to are the people who *haven’t* made up their mind, or who are only weak Obama supporters.

    Aligning oneself repeatedly with that idiot overboss at your company who thinks cutting coffee breaks down to 3 minutes will allow him to buy yet another Maserati is really not a great way to win the hearts and minds of the middle class.

  17. 17
    chingona says:

    I should note, while hardly poor or middle-class anymore, both did interact much more extensively with those economic classes during their early lives

    What a weird sentence. Interacted much more extensively with the poor and middle class? They grew up middle class. They didn’t just interact with the middle class. They were middle class.

  18. 18
    DaisyDeadhead says:

    Mythago! My grandfather used to say “Lincoln Liberal”–never heard that from anyone else! You made my day and brought back the memory of his constant political fulminating at the dinner table.

    In my piece on Romney (on the radio too), even though I was careful to say I had been a stay-at-home mom for awhile MYSELF, I was roasted by several local blogs (one a “liberal” one) for being so mean to Ann. They seem to think any choice ANY woman makes (including the choice to butt in your husband’s presidential campaign to talk about “economics” when you don’t have a clue) is beyond reproach, and employing four low-paid housekeepers in one year while babbling on Twitter about how hard you work (!) is also beyond reproach. This whole thing has made me more socialist than ever. I am astounded that any ordinary working class or middle class woman would identify with Romney and believe that she has anything in common with her. The whole thing has blown my little mind, and one blogger even OUTED ME BY NAME, if you can believe it.

    Gah!

  19. 19
    Robert says:

    Mythago, I’m obviously oversimplifying, just attempting to clarify my own point.

    Thanks for the data re: rich people and political affiliation. Interesting stuff. I withdraw that point, then. ;)

    Chingona, I phrased it that way because both of them have been on clearly upwardly-mobile tracks more or less from childhood, and were upper class (though still with strong working and middle-class roots) fairly soon after college.

  20. 20
    W.B. Reeves says:

    “Chingona, I phrased it that way because both of them have been on clearly upwardly-mobile tracks more or less from childhood, and were upper class (though still with strong working and middle-class roots) fairly soon after college.”

    Are you really suggesting an equivalence between growing up as the son of a millionaire Auto Executive and U.S Senator and President Obama’s upbringing?

  21. 21
    chingona says:

    It was totally obvious when Barack Obama’s father took off for Harvard and then returned to Kenya, leaving his mother single with a bi-racial child in the early 1960s, that he would be on upwardly mobile track for the rest of his life. Clearly.

  22. 22
    mythago says:

    Daisy @18: Be fair, I’m sure many working-class and middle-class women can sympathize with “My husband is an egotistical doucheclown who thinks that raising children isn’t really work, and can’t be bothered with lady-issues.”

  23. 23
    Robert says:

    WB, I meant both Obamas were on upwardly-mobile tracks, not both Obama and Romney. Romney was born on third base. (Though his father did have a much grittier story, and one hopes that some of that was passed on to Mitt.)

    Chingona, yes, I would say that left him on a clearly mobile track if for no other reason than that mom and dad’s bad decisions had put mother and child in about as bad a place as they could be, so where else was there to go but up? I said “more or less” with the period of his parents’ divorce in mind; there were times of struggle and shortfall but not severe shortfall and not existential struggle, and they were middle-class soon enough once she remarried and once his new stepfather got his feet under him. Obama’s maternal grandparents weren’t Rockefellers, but they weren’t homeless people living under a bridge, either; the struggle and the scramble were to avoid having to move home with mom and dad, not a struggle and scramble not to die in a gutter.

    Mrs. Obama had it easier and more stable, though her parents undoubtedly worked hard(er) to make it that way.

  24. 24
    mythago says:

    if for no other reason than that mom and dad’s bad decisions had put mother and child in about as bad a place as they could be, so where else was there to go but up?

    “I’m sorry to hear that your child has an F in Biology, but we think he’s really on an upwardly-mobile track. After all, his grade can’t get any worse!”

  25. 25
    Robert says:

    OK, Mythago, after his parents’ divorce, what changes occurred in the life of Ms. Dunham and her son that put Obama on a downward trajectory? Let’s hear them. I am outright EAGER to learn the manifold downward vectors that take a kid from a broken and bankrupt home to the White House, via Harvard Law.

  26. 26
    mythago says:

    Robert, I’m sure you are, because it’s a good distraction from your hilarious statement that Obama was “on a clearly mobile track”. Sorry, but I know a tap dance when I see it.

    Romney did it again today, telling young people they should borrow money from their parents.

  27. 27
    Robert says:

    If by “tap dancing” you mean “is right on the facts and stands by his clearly correct characterization”, then sure, OK. I’m tap-dancing to avoid having to defend my statement that Obama’s track was upward, by asking you to show the slightest indication that it was negative. Gotcha. Obviously it would be a distraction from the main point, for you to provide any information that actually undermines my assertion.

    Similarly, Romney must be insane for suggesting that young people starting a business borrow from family, because (per your link) hardly any parents have $20,000 in realizable capital that they could put into a business started by a child. Parents, as it happens, are one of the most common source of funding for new small businesses, and Mr. Romney is repeating the most mundane of conventional wisdoms in his exhortation to entrepreneurship.

    What an out-of-touch buffoon!

    I do love Alas, not least because when some Republican mediocrity goes for the big chair I can count on you guys to make me feel a lot better about him or her.

  28. 28
    mythago says:

    No, Robert, by “tap-dancing” I mean that you’re doing that thing where you first think you’re being awfully clever and sneaking one by the dumb liberals, and then get pissy when the liberals aren’t as conveniently dumb as they ought to be.

    What you actually said was not “Obama’s track was upward”. You first made an equivalence between Romney and Obama’s backgrounds, stating they were both “on clearly upwardly-mobile tracks more or less from childhood” and became “upper class” pretty soon after college; when pushed on that by chingona, you claimed that what you really meant was that “mom and dad’s bad decisions had put mother and child in about as bad a place as they could be, so where else was there to go but up?”

    TL;DR: you tried to draw a false equivalency between Obama and Romney’s upbringing, and when pressed retreated into pedestrian comments about how Obama’s life has improved. Well, yes, it has. And?

    Parents, as it happens, are one of the most common source of funding for new small businesses

    [citation needed] aside, as you know, the derision was at the idea that all of those new graduates could simply go bum $20K off their parents – particularly in these troubled economic times. And it’s really not the kind of thing one wants to say if one already has an image problem of thinking that real hardship is having to sell off a tiny portion of one’s stock porfolio to pay tuition.

  29. 29
    Robert says:

    I was not equating Romney and Obama. By “both” I was referring to Michelle and Barack Obama, both of whom indeed have been on upward tracks for their lives. The one point in Barack’s life where you could make an argument for an interruption of that progress narrative, is the point Chingona mentioned, and I did indeed note that you could at least see it as a defining-bottom moment for him (more for his mother, since she was the one with most of the agency at the time) and they moved up from there.

  30. 30
    Robert says:

    I went back to reread my posts to see if I was clear about who I was talking about; I was. There’s a point of confusion possible when Chingona asks why I phrased a statement (which was manifestly and obviously about the Obamas, not about Obama-Romney) and I use a pronoun instead of a name, but since Chingona didn’t quote me in her inquiry, the only way you’d know what she was talking about would be by reading my preceding comment, where who I was talking about was specified by name. The only way I can see for you to jump to the conclusion that I was equating Romney and Obama is if you started from Chingona’s query and didn’t read or didn’t parse the original statement.

  31. 31
    chingona says:

    What I thought was weird was that you said the Obamas “interacted with” middle class people – instead of simply that they grew up middle class. Now you’re talking about how they weren’t living under a bridge. Goalposts. Moving.

  32. 32
    Robert says:

    OK, fine, they grew up middle class. It was a little more complex for Barack (multi-culti, sometimes outright poor) than for Michelle. They aren’t middle class now; they became upper class pretty fast through good values, hard work, smart choices, good networking, a little luck – the usual suspects. They probably, even from the White House, have more contact with their old milieus than the Romneys have with their former connections to the non-elite (Mitt used to pastor a middle-class church).

    I still don’t see how this is relevant to my point, which has been quibbledicked ad infinitum, but not yet substantively disputed.

  33. 33
    Robert says:

    The bridge comment referred to Ann Dunham’s parents. Not the goalposts; not moved.

  34. 34
    Tyrannus Evisceratus says:

    Do Barrack Obama and Joe Biden understand what it is to be poor or middle class any better?

    Most people who become President have no clue, and one of the requirements for the office is that your wealthy and well connected enough to get nominated for it.

    There are exceptions to this rule Bill Clinton and Harry Truman come to mind.

    There really isn’t any correlation between great presidents and how poor or rich they were strangely. George Washington would have made Mitt Romney look like a pauper, but he is a legendary figure today. George Washington still holds the record for wealthiest president ever. FDR himself was a millionaire. Lyndon B. Johnson was just a secretary answering phones when he went to Washington, but he worked his way up to the top from the bottom. Thomas Jefferson died broke.

    I am not a huge fan of Mitt Romney(Mormonism is just a cult), but he seems willing to make cuts which regardless of how you feel about big government needs to be done. How much and where to cut is open to debate. Maybe we should talk about that instead of how much money he has.

  35. 35
    Charles S says:

    TE,

    Calling Mormonism a cult is merely a red flag that you are a religious bigot. There is no legitimate sense in which Mormonism is any more a cult than any other Christian denomination. Speaking as a moderator, your religious bigotry is not welcome here. Please don’t attempt to defend or justify your bigotry against Mormonism, and please refrain from making anti-Mormon comments here in the future.

  36. 36
    Tyrannus Evisceratus says:

    cult
    noun
    1.
    a particular system of religious worship, especially with reference to its rites and ceremonies.

  37. 37
    Ruchama says:

    TE, if that’s the definition you meant, then how does “Mormonism is just a cult” work as justification for your statement that you’re not a fan of Romney? “I’m not a fan of Romney (Mormonism is just a system of religious worship)” is nonsense.

  38. 38
    Tyrannus Evisceratus says:

    That is a little more complicated since my definition for the word cult lies in between the negative connotation of the word that Charles tried to saddle me with and the textbook definition I listed below.

    I am willing to bet that most people who discuss Mormonisn on this site have never actually met a Mormon and are going off what they hear about the religion. I live in Mesa Arizona it is the Mormon capital of the world. Even Utah has nothing to rival the mormon presence in Mesa. I went to high school with Mormons had Mormon friends and teachers and I meet people at the store all the time and chances are they are probably Mormon(they are not all up in your face about it contrary to popular belief.)

    They are really great people. I would love to add Mormonism to my list of accepted religions, because that is millions of souls that are saved. I have more to gain from that than what I am doing currently. Mormons all vote republican they donate generously to conservative political causes and they all hate the idea of gay marriage and they like a low tax rate. Their family unit is the strongest I have ever seen. It makes a Norman Rockwell painting look seedy. They are the greatest allies any right leaning Christian could ask for. They are immensely superior to Christians in all these ways, and they are the most hardcore Republicans you will ever meet.

    The problem is and I ask myself this on every religion if you follow this religion will your soul be saved? It may not be politically correct to judge other people’s religion, but as Christians we have a job to do. We are supposed to save souls for Christ. That duty is greater than any desire to be politically correct or to avoid being labeled a religious bigot.

    Mormonism looks remarkably like Christianity from the outside looking in, but when you live near Mormons you hear things. I heard things that made me doubt the benevolence of their religion. Ask a Mormon how they feel about Easter sometime and you start to see where I am going with this. I am not gonna say anymore since the moderator is about ready to throw me off this thread.

  39. 39
    Ruchama says:

    I am willing to bet that most people who discuss Mormonisn on this site have never actually met a Mormon and are going off what they hear about the religion.

    Actually, the girl (now woman) who’s been my best friend since first grade is Mormon. The rest of your post is irrelevant to me, since I’m not Christian. I’m pretty sure it’s also irrelevant to this discussion thread, but I’ll let a moderator make that call.

  40. 40
    Daulnay says:

    I am not a huge fan of Mitt Romney(…), but he seems willing to make cuts which regardless of how you feel about big government needs to be done.

    Are you really arguing that we should be cutting government spending in the middle of a depression? The evidence from the Great Depression suggests otherwise. So does the current mess in Europe. Especially since the Fed has decided to lower their inflationary guildelines.

  41. 41
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    Charles S says:
    April 30, 2012 at 1:14 am
    There is no legitimate sense in which Mormonism is any more a cult than any other Christian denomination.

    Huh? There are absolutely are some significant differences w/r/t certain types of beliefs commonly associated with cults, between Mormonism and many other Christian denonimations.

    This is no surprise, seeing as there are also other Christian and non-Christian religions which are more cult-like than others. It’s also no surprise, because Mormonism is relatively new as these things go; by and large, it seems that starting a religion successfully often involves some sort of cult-like behavior to get converts, and it takes a while to dissipate.

    Now, do I refer to Mormons as “cultists” or to Mormonism as a “cult?” No.

    Standard Mormonism doesn’t have enough cult-like qualities to cross the line IMO. (Highly conservative Mormonism probably does. But highly conservative people of almost any faith would also meet the same standard; to select a non-Christian example I would point to certain groups of Orthodox Jews.)

    All religions aren’t the same, sometimes in important ways. Their doctrines aren’t the same. Their teachings aren’t the same. The actions of their members aren’t the same. It’s not bigotry to point that out.

    Similarly, it is utterly ridiculous to suggest that people should simultaneously be able to choose to join or maintain membership in groups that are affiliated with particular positions and actions, and then to claim that their voluntary association in those groups shouldn’t lead to any conclusions about them, lest it be called bigotry. Seriously, how can you go there?

    I have trouble believing that you would permit this for most groups. Imagine I said “I joined the Men’s Rights Party and I donate to them because it’s a nice group of people and my parents are members. But don’t hold that against me: I really support government services for women. If you talk about my membership in a negative sense, you’re acting like a bigot.”

    Would you accept that? Or would you (reasonably) say “Look, the party is a platform and the reason to join it is that you are impliedly supporting the platform. You chose to be, and remain, a member. You can make your own choices but you don’t get to control my regard for your choices by calling me a bigot.”

    Why make a special exception for religion?

  42. 42
    Charles S says:

    g&w,

    Eh, there are undoubtedly cult-like groups within Mormonism and cult like groups within many other Christian denominations. Accusing Mormonism of being a cult is a standard trope of anti-Mormon bigotry.

    As to the rest of your points: Not interested in discussing it with you. Excuse making for anti-Mormon bigotry in this thread is over. Indeed, discussion of Mormonism in this thread is over. This is not a thread about Mormonism.

  43. 43
    mythago says:

    Robert @33: your point was a false equivalence and has been vigorously disputed, even though you keep changing it. Nobody has argued that the Obamas and the Romneys are in the top 1%. The difference is that Romney has always had great wealth and that he shows absolutely no signs of understanding how that affects his life. On the contrary, if he was trying to give a wink and a nod to the “Tarim hates poor people” speech from Cerebus he could hardly do a better job of it.

  44. 44
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    Charles S says:
    April 30, 2012 at 10:48 am
    Excuse making for anti-Mormon bigotry in this thread is over. Indeed, discussion of Mormonism in this thread is over.

    Fine: Which open thread do you prefer?

    Otherwise, I hope you’ll retract your unfounded accusation of “excuse making for bigotry,” since that is not what I’m doing. It would be pretty rude to post that and then use your mod-ness to deny a response.

  45. 45
    Charles S says:

    None (you are free to pick one of your choosing, I am free to not have a conversation with you). Not interested in discussing this with you. No retraction forthcoming. Consider it rude if you please.

  46. 46
    Plop says:

    When I started to speak about bullying (that I lived) i used to encounter answers “It wasn’t that bad” or “You are exagerating. Show me a proof”. It was hurtful and demeaning.
    Now everybody speaks of bullying as something slightly bad but normal (like sexism). “They deserve it, they just should get tougher”, “I’m sure there was a reason”.
    I guess, that, at least, it’s recognized as something actually happening.