Doesn’t matter. Someone points out that she gets hit with physical threats that ignore anyone’s station in life, saying, in essence, “Yeah, well she didn’t have coal dust in her lungs and one leg, so what’s the big deal?”
Things like cancer and MS end lives at all income levels. Or do you think a wealthy child who loses his mother cries less than a poor child? And that a middle class child cries someplace between the two.
This notion is just petty and low.
BULLSHIT.
One of my friends was diagnosed with breast cancer. Another struggles with MS. Both of their struggles have very little in common with Ann Romney’s. Romney will never have to worry about losing her job because she can’t work. Romney will never have to worry about losing her health care access because she can’t work. She will never have to apply for food stamps because she can’t earn enough to feed herself because she’s sick. Ann Romney will never have to beg a friend to drive her to treatments because she’s too sick or ask that friend to watch her kids because she’s too poor to afford a babysitter because all her money went for co-pays that week.
Why can’t you admit that? And why can’t Ann Romney admit it either? It isn’t petty to point out how Ann Romney’s money shields her from the reality that many women with breast cancer or MS face. It’s certainly not petty to be infuriated that she tells us to vote for her husband who will only make things worse for said cancer and MS victims.
Are we not even allowed to have an honest conversation about these facts?
No, and that is the crux of the problem in political discourse in our country. We’ve politicized abortion and religion and anything else that will gain traction, and the result is that we all face the specter of having it legislated by the federal government. The right has abdicated to the American Taliban Party because they’re spineless panderers who did not see that by doing so they were throwing America and their party to the wolves. There are hard times coming, and not just economic ones.
Then you’re seriously not understanding what the objection is. It’s not that disease is kinder to the rich, it’s that the implications of having a disease and what that does to your health insurance / job / single income earner status means. Nobody is minimizing the fact that she went through breast cancer or MS. It’s that she doesn’t have any concept of going through MS and not knowing how she’ll support her family. She has unlimited resources at her disposal that make the overall impact on her life more tolerable. That’s why people have a hard time believing her as a spokesperson for “people who have gone through a terrible disease”. There’s an entire section of your life that isn’t impacted in a negative way by an illness of that magnitude if you are as wealthy as she is.
Actually, I believe YOU are the one that doesn’t get it. You look at money, or lack of it, as what defines being human. Do you really think you love your husband more, love your children more, fear dying and being separated from them more? If so, you are the one that doesn’t get it. There is no question that money makes lots of stuff easier, but when one puts their head on the pillow at night wondering if a disease she has will be killing her, 800 thread-count percale is not making it all better. There is all the stuff we have or don’t have, and then there’s there’s our own mortality. Cancer really doesn’t give a shit how wealthy you are. That was the point of bringing up Steve Jobs. It’s amazing that this liberal infatuation with trying to piss on the wealthy even carries over to diseases like MS and breast cancer. This one-downmanship is pathetic.
As far as you never outsourcing a job, I will bet any money that you and your Einstein-smart husband have not created a tenth of the jobs that Romney did—net!. Hell, a thousandth! But no matter, he and his wife are rich and they must be pissed on. Such is the world according to liberal geniuses. They have money, therefore they can’t have heartache. Well, not heartache like people like you, of course. Because you’ve got that coal dust in your lungs, and one leg, and the cow is dying, and the car is 12 years old. :rolleyes:
How on Earth do you go from what LavenderBlue posted, to this?
Nobody’s angry at the wealthy for being wealthy. They’re angry at the wealthy for trying to pretend their wealth hasn’t afforded them any additional luxuries in life, like getting cancer and not worrying that you’ll die because you can’t afford treatment.
Yes, the faux folksiness of that grad school story was what really struck me.
My wife and I went to grad school. We lived on relatively little money. Here’s the thing, though. We’re both from upper-middle class families (nowhere near the wealth of both of the Romney’s families). Even if we scrimped day-to-day to live within our income, we knew, without any doubt, that we had a backstop. If something went really, really wrong, we could go to our families and ask for a little help (or a lot). And we’d get it, because our families had enough surplus that we wouldn’t be taking food out of their mouths.
We didn’t earn that safety net. We won the birth-canal lottery. So did the Romneys. That’s not to say that Mitt Romney didn’t work hard to make himself even more rich than he was born. It’s just that the two of them never really struggled. They only pretend struggled. So did we.
I would never, ever say I understood what it’s like to not be able to pay my bills. I am incredibly lucky, and so are the Romneys. Of course hard work contributes to success. But so does luck. I wish the Romneys and the GOP would actually admit that. That’s why Ann Romney’s speech left me so cold.
No one questions that lack of money makes things harder. No one. My point is that there is something greater that makes the money immaterial. Yes, you’re right in that wealth can and does make things easier. It makes everything easier. But you seem to want to push that to mean that wealthy people can’t have tragedy in their lives. Or, if they do, it’s not as tragic as, say, yours. You seem intent on depriving Anne Romney of membership in the club that we are all members of: human beings. People. People who love their children and spouses and—life! Most of us do not want to die. Do you think at the end Steve Jobs wouldn’t have gladly traded all his wealth in for a cure. The same way (I assume) you or I would.
You want to define Anne Romney, and I guess other people who are wealthy, by that wealth. But it doesn’t define them. Being wealthy is one aspect of who they are. If a wealthy person loses a five-year-old child to an accident, do you think she hurts less that someone who is poor? Seriously, do you? Because, that’s really what you’re saying…that by virtual of her having wealth she is unable to to have something happen in her life that would be as devastating as it would be to someone much poorer.
I find this desire to deprive her of the deepest essence, that we all share with her, absolutely odd.
You can desperately try to join your brethren in trying to convince everybody that there is some sort of ‘war on the rich’, but it’s a laughable notion. The focus of the wealthy is the impoverishing of the middle class to the benefit of the rich. By that means only do they believe that they can subjugate what they see as trouble-making rabble who have the effrontery to want their small slice of a very large pie. Nobody cares if you make your millions. Everybody cares when you try to pretend that you’re just folks while shoving onerous legislation up our asses that is designed to take away what little is left. It’s insulting and patronizing.
We’re talking about the Republicans who have made the entire theme of their convention “We Built That,” right?
Not to hijack the thread away from the Kennedys, but we all know that it’s expected that the likes of Limbaugh and Hannity will take one sentence out of an Obama speech, twist its meaning, and then attack him for “saying” something completely different than what he actually said. But has there ever before been a major party that made this technique the cornerstone of their convention, with virtually every speaker, even sweet little Ann, pounding on it?
From this Der Trihs-like screed, I see that you don’t get it either. When it comes right down to it, the rich really are just people, too. Really. Again, no one doubt that wealth makes life easier. But the fact is that even great wealth can not protect one from the weaknesses that may befall any being…any person. A
As disappointed as I am by this notion, I am even more entertained by your cartoonish Mr. Burns view of the wealthy. I would love to be able to snap my fingers and have you see what it would be like to live in a world as you imagine it should be. Like Haji, from I Dream of Jeannie I could watch reality hit you in the face on you scream that I blink you back into the real world.
You still simply don’t get it, do you?
:dubious:
Ann Romney and her husband are the people who want to deprive others of their humanity simply based on money. Her husband’s policies are all about making life easier for those who have a lot and harder for those who don’t. I find your refusal to admit that fact absolutely frightening.
One of my friends is a nurse. She tells horror stories about women who come into the ER with huge lumps in their breasts that are obviously breast cancer that can’t be treated anymore. Why? Because they’ve lost their jobs and lost their access to medical care. They know the lump is there but they are terrified of being driven into fiscal hell to treat it. Ann and Mittens would do absolutely nothing to change that horrific problem. Reducing Democratic outrage about that to idiotic accusations of jealousy or “you’re attempting to deprive Ann of her humanity” is preposterous.
How the heck do we make war on the rich? Can’t get past security to be rude!
Translation: Anne is rich. The disease that may kill her is not as bad as the disease that may kill me or someone poor. Her mortality is not as scary to her as yours is to you. Why? Because she’s rich. A person who loses a child, but is wealthy, will not feel as much heartbreak as you. Because after all, she is rich and you are not. Tell me, is this escaping the realities of what it means to be human worked by a toggle-like switch. If so, at what income level does someone’s life-threatening disease cease to be as devastating to them as it is to you? Do you take into retirement funds, too? Or is it more of a continuum, with constant gradations. Regardless, it seems safe to assume that someone who might have a quarter of your wealth would suffer a disease more than you would. Is that about right? A frind of my family lost two of her children to accidents. She probably makes $60,00 per year, but the husband she also lost had left her a nice life insurance policy. Can you give me a gauge of how comforting I should try to be?
That is absolutely not what she’s saying.
I’m not the one escaping reality or denying it. You are. You can’t even admit that there’s a massive and terrifying difference between a breast cancer patient who has no medical insurance and one who is married to one of the wealthiest men in the world. Or that said wealthy man is trying to make the life of the person without medical insurance even harder so that he and his wife can have even more money they don’t need. She doesn’t care about other breast cancer or MS patients. She’s the one who thinks her mortality should be so much more of a concern than anyone else’s. Other people can die just as long as she can retain her right to pay very little in taxes on her family’s income. That’s incredibly calllous.
Both of you are flatly wrong, buying into an urban legend.
Daniel Okrent in Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition looks into this. He says that he could find no evidence of Joe Kennedy’s bootlegging activities, let alone the fortune he supposedly made from it.
Kennedy made his money in stocks and then in Hollywood. Do I hear any apologies?
Callous is a good word—for what you wrote. But perhaps there’s some organism infecting your brain. If so, can you share with me your financial information so I can be sure to dial up to the appropriate level of sympathy?
No, because you overstate the case in his defense. Also, I mentioned insider trading as a stock broker, as well. Which, in my opinion, is even worse then the bootlegging he is guilty of.