Only by taking her words out of context.
CairoCarol wrote:
I see nothing there recommending what she had to endure.
I didn’t mean it to be funny. Did you think I was joking?
“Scary, fucked up kid” was not the best language I could have chosen and I regret putting it in those terms.
However, given what we know - which isn’t everything - I think she’s caught in a scary, fucked up situation and is crying out for help. I also think it is quite likely that growing up with “monsters” has fucked with her head. You may entirely disagree, of course.
I shouldn’t be posting right now so I’m not going to find the specific post, but someone did say that George isn’t a monster, just Kellyanne. On that, I disagree after long self-reflection. For years I thought my mother’s abusive behavior made her terrible, while my dad was a nice guy - he rarely hit me, and sometimes would mildly suggest to my mother that the misbehavior for which I was being punished maybe wasn’t that bad.
It took me a long time to realize that he was an adult in the room, too, with a front row seat to what was happening. He knew exactly how I was treated, and he did nothing.
If Claudia’s allegations of outright abuse are correct, and George witnessed the abuse and did nothing to protect his children, then he too is a monster.
(That has nothing to do with politics, BTW. Both the left and the right can abuse their kids.)
Since they’ve waited until now to give a shit about their kids’ upbringing, it’s too damn late. They’re now going to go from being part time parents to trying to be a full time influence on their behavior. With teenagers. Good luck with all that.
Kid looks like an ungrateful little shit, social media is good for that sort of thing.
https://m.worldstarhiphop.com/apple/video.php?v=wshhYuxnYhuLs62wW8pJ
Kellyanna?
Sorry, I couldn’t read the entire rest of this thread before responding to a couple of points.
First, this is a sad situation and I hope this girl and her siblings have not suffered greatly.
Second, I think there is room for more than one victim here. In addition, it does not seem improbable that all of the Conway’s have misplaced priorities.
Third, it seems improper to sit around and speculate about the pain of public persons and their innocent/not so innocent offspring without knowing much about their history and home life – now, or before the present administration. With THAT being said –let me freshen my drink, put my feet up, and speculate with the best of them.
To the first point, without doubt the young girl has undoubtedly both gained some benefit - - - and suffered some difficulty as a result of having somewhat famous, somewhat rich parents. Adolescence is hard for everyone they say and I have never seen much to contradict that assertion. Some handle it better than others, but everyone has struggles. But Claudia asking the polar opposite of her upbringing (both before and since Trump- her parents are both Republican operatives) and paradigm to adopt her just sort of smacks of attention gathering. Maybe she thinks and feels deeply about a progressive agenda – but that hints at snark aimed to hit mom and dad where it really hurts.
Even if it is a bit late (but none of us are likely to be in a position to know for sure), both of her parents are giving her the attention she desires now. I really have a hard time imagining she is truly unloved or abandoned. I can easily see how she might be occasionally neglected in a busy two career home, but that happens even when neither parent is the devil’s advocate. If you have to miss the dance recital because of Super Tuesday primaries, or because of a mandatory sales conference in Topeka, the kid is still sad and hurt.
Second, while I often want to throw a beer can at the TV whenever Ms. Conway is speaking on it (thank goodness I hardly drink or I would be buying a LOT of new TV’s), I can feel sorry for her. Perhaps she is a victim of her own success. She signs on to a sinking campaign to be the first woman to run a presidential campaign and ends up with a high powered, high paying job that might be the stepping stone to doing real good in the world. She hates her boss, she hates her job, but oh baby! We can pay off the private schools for the kids and (whatever rich people do these days – put in a pool, buy a sailboat, afford boarding fees for a horse, etc.) Perhaps she is thinking: “If I pull this off, I can work on any campaign in the world! I can get the local dog catcher elected to a post where he (or she) reduces taxes and improves services at the same time! I will ride it out with this clown; I will pay my dues so I can pay off the mortgage and retire to do real good in the world.”
She is obviously smart enough to know the shit that comes out of her own mouth is nonsense. Perhaps she comes home every night and bangs her head against the wall. Maybe mornings in the Conway house is Kellyanne bitching and moaning about another day defending this misogynistic, racist piece of shit, then painting on her smile and going to the salt mines. And if that is true, I can easily see a petulant teen or tween, with their perfect black or white world view blaming her mother for being a hypocrite rather than appreciating that her mother suffers and endures for the sake of the whole family, but she doesn’t have to like it. Mom got on a treadmill (for longer term dopers- a frictionless one) and cannot takeoff, or jump off. No one is happy about it, but the rules of the game are you never quit a paying job unless you can get a better one and she is already at the pinnacle of Bizarro World.
The long hours, the endless effort – finally mom and dad have some pillow talk about the evil mom has unleashed on the world. They make plans to launch the Lincoln Project. Mom and dad are dueling in public, but it is all for right and justice. Every single day they expect to be the last, but damn, mom is too competent. Even when she says absurd things trying to get fired they work on the simplistic cable news audience (named for an undomesticated canine), plus it stirs up numbers for the other cable news shows. She is a star despite herself; and her kids resent her for it. Dad suffers in multiple ways, his wife is stuck in this ass clown’s circus, and he has to suspend his life’s work to close down the circus and they are a punch line all over town (for multiple reasons), and the kids are in the middle, and how the hell did we get here?!?
Nobody likes it, the whole family is frustrated and exhausted and literally on opposite sides of Every. Single. Issue. They have all paid heavy dues and the whole family has suffered. Either because the daughter really is sickened by her mother’s hypocrisy, or because they are all (including the fifteen year old daughter) master level spin doctors - - they close up shop, pop some popcorn, and watch Trump self immolate without mom to put him out.
Whatever the truth is, I hope they have an opportunity to reconnect and be good to each other. As long as Trump goes down in flames in November, I wish the Conway’s well. (With this possible epilog: if the daughter was just trying to piss off her parents to get attention and never was neglected or abused - - - then it would be a nice turn of events if New York’s representative for the 14th district gives the girl her first job ever – then has to fire her shortly thereafter because she is too much of a drama queen! That kind of instant karma is what makes life worth living. If that narrative happens to be the one that is true.)
I agree with a lot of your assessment of the situation, other than your sympathy for Kellyanne and your suggestion that she might have been trying to get fired.
If this was really the only way she could get money to feed her family I might be willing to cut her some slack. This is why I don’t yell at telemarketers, even the ones who are calling about bogus Cancer charities. But this job wasn’t the only thing separating her from homelessness. That she did it for the money is not an excuse, Bernie Madoff, and Tony Soprano also had families who relied on them, it doesn’t stop them form being scum. She made a conscious choice to lie, deceive and propagate harmful conspiracy theories, she could have quit and sold a million copies of her tell all memoir like all of the other ex-Trumpists before finding gainful employment in a number of PR firms where she wouldn’t have to sacrifice her last shred of decency at the door. If she wanted to get fired, all she had to do is to start telling the truth.
I’m glad to see both of the Conway’s pulling back, it sounds likely to be what is best for the family.
I disagree now, but I held on to the belief that you might be right for quite a while before losing hope. It seemed too incredible that Kellyanne, who is not dumb, wouldn’t realize at some point that Trump’s petulance, lack of intellectual curiosity, and other traits are simply bad for the country. Also, as a female who was probably at some point an attractive young blonde, surely she has experienced the sexism that fairly oozes from Trump’s every pore - if not from Trump himself, from others in her life, so she ought to have the insight to peg Trump for the misogynist he is.
So, I kept thinking, “Kellyanne is smart, she’s a woman, and she’s seen Trump up close. There is NO WAY she can actually support him over the long term. She’s a mole and she’ll turn on him when the moment is right. Or maybe she is truly deluded by him at first, but she will see the light.”
Anyway, I gave up on that a long time ago. Her time has passed. If she wanted to help the world by sharing what she knows about Trump’s incompetence behind closed doors, she should have done it a long time ago. Even if she eventually writes a book excoriating him, it will be too little, too late.
As I stated above, every time I see Kellyanne on TV- I want to hurl (either something at the device, or the contents of my stomach). And I do not forgive her for foisting Trump on us. But I can believe she is just doing the job she has (and resenting the shit out of it AND her boss the whole time. Let me tell you a story. . . .
Back in the late nineties and early 2000’s, I was married to woman with a pretty high income. Not movie star rich, but in the top five percent of wage earners for women (for clarification, most women with an income in her ballpark were not wage earners- they were professionals who owned their own practice). She worked long hours and had a lot of responsibility, she managed other high income employees and ran a business that did over three Hundred Million U.S. Dollars a year. Her boss and her boss’s boss were workaholics who would send her e-mails at 3am routinely. They both hated weekends and would often go into the office both days even though there was nothing they couldn’t do from home over the weekends. I was forced to attend social events a few times a year and they were enough to give the average bloke an ulcer in one night.
Early on I would criticize her saying she worked in an air conditioned building and shuffled papers around. Actually, she put numbers into spreadsheets and created plans that made a shit-ton of money for a big corporate enterprise. It was long hours, but they had a cafeteria with a gourmet chef (and all the food was free) there were other perks, but it was a LOT OF PRESSURE! A missed opportunity could cost the company significantly. Her sphincter could easily turn coal to diamonds.
She hated her boss, her job, the relentless pursuit of a perfect business plan, and constant fear of a missed opportunity. She grew to resent her co-workers and the whole thing was a nerve wracking nightmare – which we went to extreme lengths to protect; literally rescheduling wedding and other family functions, and holiday celebrations, travelling when it fit the business and no other time, etc. She was miserable and I was disillusioned to say the least. It was a difficult life to live. But her yearend bonus was often more than I made in a whole year.
During this time, I was back east settling the estate of an elderly relative. She was there a couple of times, once for a week and another time for a long weekend. Oh, I forgot an important detail, we had known each other for a long time but had become romantically involved for the first time in this small town while visiting my extended family (most of whom she always liked better than me anyway). I cleaned up the messes, took both sides of the family out for a celebratory dinner, held the funeral, and sold off the remaining items that were not going to a specific relative. While selling the home, I saw what property values were and hatched a plan.
I found a nice little cottage for only $30,000, newly renovated. Not a ton of house but perfect for a DINK couple who just wanted to vacation. I suggested we buy the house and liquidate $100,000 dollars which we could place in a retail bank account and live on it for three to five years- keep everything else growing in equities. We could travel if we wanted, or just enjoy our loved ones and have snow at the holidays—whatever we wanted. The house would be paid for, bills amounted to squat, we could cook gourmet meals or dine out as often as we liked. When we got short of money, we would put out resumes, sell the house for the same amount we paid for it, and move back to a big city where one month would cost what we lived on for half a year. It appealed to her immediately—except it was not a good business plan; make hey while the sun shines and all that.
I pointed out that her major concern was that she would be a broken down alcoholic by the time she retired – and this way we could have five, maybe seven years of retirement while we were still young enough to enjoy it, then go back to work and work toward our real retirement. The idea was rejected by her after the first week and then again after the third week. Again a week after that, then two weeks later yet again; she tried to justify it over and over again. But the truth of the matter was, it took her forever to work her way up to where she was and if she started over - - she may never get back there again and we would have to have domestic vacations or worse …… go on routine cruises like other old people when we retired. Having obtained (and even superseded) her dream job which she hated, she was NOT going to let it go until she absolutely HAD to let it go.
Ms. Conway works for an absolute ass clown. You know it, I know it, SHE knows it, even her teenage daughter knows it for goodness sake, but she works in the West Wing of the Whitehouse!! This is as good as it gets for a political operative; this is the World Series, The Super Bowl, game seven of the finals. Maybe more than that—those happen every year; an administration is once every four or eight years. I don’t blame Ms. Conway for not wanting to bailout early. In fact, she kind of reminds me of the second season of The West Wing when the Ainsly Hayes (sp?) character says something to the effect of: “I have always wanted to work in the Whitehouse, but does it have to be THIS Whitehouse?”
Sure she could have kept a roof over their heads in advertizing or something else. And Reggie Jackson could have sold aluminum siding, Michael Jordan could have been an insurance agent, and Tiger Woods could have a driving instructor (okay, bad example!), Arnold Palmer could have been soft drink engineer (another bad example – but you see what I mean?). I don’t know many people who could have kept Trump out of jail and in the Oval Office as well as George’s wife Kellyanne.
Like my ex wife and all her co-workers however, I bet Kellyanne Conway can turn coal into diamonds; working for Trump must make for very well developed sphincter muscles
I cannot believe I am defending this woman, her every utterance is offensive to me. The people she works for are the worst threat to our country in my lifetime I believe.
However I have to admire her perseverance in showing up to a job and a boss we know she must HATE, and doing her professional best to spin his insanity. That is her job and I would have never had the stomach to do it for even a day.
Please read Chris Buckley’s THANK YOU FOR SMOKING if you get the chance. Hating someone for being good at their job isn’t really fair. Criticizing her for choosing that job- yea, that is more fair.
I had students who got legally emancipated. You can’t just walk into court, say, “I hate my parents!” and get emancipated. In addition to knowing what the home situation is, judges want to know where and how the kid would be living. How responsible is she? Dies she have a job? The kids I knew were 16 or 17 and had jobs. The parents aren’t obligated to pay for food and clothing, nor are emancipated teens the responsibility of DFS. Judges also want to know whether therapy could help and whether that’s been tried. Legal emancipation is viewed as a last resort.
The Conway girl is 15. That makes it harder to get LE’d. She insists her reasons are not her mother’s job but trauma and abuse. However this plays out, I hope she gets whatever she needs in order to finish growing up in a healthy environment.
Wait, isn’t emancipation the kind of thing Judge Judy would actually handle while she was a judge? That kind of scrutiny?
~Max
Not to be That Poster (the one who is an expert on something five minutes after consulting Google), but this struck me as an informative website about the legal considerations of minor emancipation:
I think there’s a chance they have outright ignored her pleas and dismissed her concerns as simple attention seeking, thinking their lofty positions will protect them somehow.
Then, perhaps, they get a sense this is really gonna happen, some shit could hit the fan, our reps could take a big hit, how can we cut this off at the pass?
I’m thinking they are getting legal advice that only something massive can turn this around for them. Such a big change in the home dynamic that any judge, faced with whatever complaint the minor may bring, will in the name of giving the family every chance for reconciliation, shoot the girl’s efforts down. After all, the parents are making such a big sacrifice to try and right things!
If that’s what’s going on, I hope it doesn’t work.
(To be clear, just another wild ass guess of a slightly different stripe is all!)
The daughter wanting to be emancipated is not the problem. It is a symptom of the problem. The problem is the toxic environment created when a pro-Trump individual and an anti-Trump individual, both Republican, are attempting to live together. I can’t imagine the tension. They are wisely pulling back and trying to figure out who they themselves are and see if they can salvage their relationship with each other, their daughter, and the rest of the family. I wish them well.
Just think; we could build a sitcom around the situation. We’ll call it The Conways. “Can two people, one a Trump supporter, one not, learn to live with each other and successfully parent their children?”
No, it’s a much higher level of scrutiny than a TV “reality” show applies in 15 minutes or however long it is. In some states there is a family law court where divorces, adoptions, and the like are heard. Where I lived, emancipation cases were heard at the state district court, and the judge examined them with the intensity such serious case deserved. After all, we’re talking about the complete and abject failure of parents, to the point where kids had to grow up too fast in order to survive.
I think he was talking about Judge Judy when she was an actual Family Court judge in New York. I don’t know if she would have heard emancipation cases in that role, but she certainly would have expertise in that area of law because of the numerous child custody cases she heard, which would not have just been disputes between parents but also cases where the she had to decide on the state taking custody of a child. My guess based on what she’s written and talked about is that she’d be on the side of this child and come down hard enough on her parents to get things worked out to keep the family intact and give her a chance to thrive,
I wondered about that, too, but the “that level of scrutiny” line led me to believe he was talking about the TV show.