LA JOLLA, CA — Three apparently poorly-vetted photos have the heat turned up in the Romney kitchen once again. The photos were distributed Wednesday by the Romney Campaign itself, explained spokesperson Bitsy Pestle, in an effort to re-frie Mitt Romney‘s flaccid ratings with America’s women after his recent attempts to introduce undignified welfare mothers to the “dignity of work“— outside their domiciles. Oh and yes, these are the “very poor” that Mitt Romney isn’t “worried about.”
As governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney, referring to young mothers, told a campaign crowd “…Even if you have a child two years of age, you need to go to work.” Romney wants female welfare recipients to experience the “dignity of work” by having an outside the home job in addition to the job of raising children, because parenting “does not give poor mothers ‘the dignity of work.”
Matt Yglesias at Slate:
“The phrase ‘the dignity of work’ is extremely condescending and ignores precisely the point the Romney camp was trying to make about Ann Romney—unpaid household work is still work and it’s still hard.”
And when it suited him, as it did in 1994, Romney also pointed out that the world has changed since the 1960s: “Now mom and dad both have to work.”
Indeed they do. And he means mom has to work more, and specifically outside the home, if she wants real dignity. Only, the “dignity of work” for these welfare “queens” as Reagan called them, in addition to raising children, will garner them just 77 cents on the dollar compared to men; oh wait, that’s a different Romney gaff.
And that’s precisely why the photos of “Oven Mitt“— a term of endearment coined by one of his children after a particularly odiferous adventure on a Viking six-burner range— letting it all hang out in the kitchen have whipped up more tasty questions than they have answered.
Instantly dubbed the “Crack of Dawn Dignity” photo, hungry reporters wanted to know the whereabouts of Romney‘s secret Mormon undergarments, and were quick to draw a parallel to the stereotyped image of woman as “naked, barefoot, and chained to the kitchen stove.” A bleary-eyed, bare-assed Romney manned the stove as the sun rose, said spokesperson Pestle, not because “Oven Mitt” was suffering some kinky form of reverse discrimination, but because his alarm had not gone off before dawn, as it was just “his turn” to get up early and make Sunday breakfast for the Romney brood.
As the day wore on, it was Romney himself who shed more light upon the family’s too racy for prime time “dinner table event” banter:
“Dinner table event” pranks that can’t be repeated on the air?? Tell me more, man who lives for laughter…
