One More About Mitt
By Jeffrey Page
If I want to avoid the truth I could be brazen and tell you No when the truth is Yes.
Or, I could dance the old soft shoe and hope you don’t suddenly realize you’re being duped.
Or, like Mitt Romney, I could just immerse you in delusional blather. Romney is great with blather.
His sentimental acceptance speech was designed to make us think of him as just an ordinary humble guy, that is, an ordinary humble guy with a 2011 income of $22 million. To do so, he employed one of the more unfortunate metaphors you’re likely to hear. “The soles of Neil Armstrong’s boots on the moon made permanent impressions on our souls…. ” he said, and then, with gooey ordinary humble-guy sincerity, he played the Armstrong card a few more times.
“Tonight that American flag is still there on the moon,” Romney said, not bothering to explain how he knew this or what this factoid was doing in a partisan political speech. “And I don’t doubt for a second that Neil Armstrong’s spirit is still with us…. ”
Question: Was that the unsubtle Romney’s elusive attempt to suggest, with the grace of a Ringling Bros. elephant stepping into a bucket, that the late Neil Armstrong was – or had been – on board the Romney bandwagon?
Question: Was it just me, or did you also hear that little catch in Romney’s throat? You know: that mawkish gasp he uses on special occasions, such as when he’s trying to connect himself to an American hero or when he’s talking about Little League and the need for Americans to find more time so they can coach their kids’ soccer teams.
More time for soccer? Is Romney of this Earth? Soccer, when many of us are striving to meet the mortgage payment or go out on interview after interview trying to land a job? Does Mitt Romney have any understanding of what’s going on out here? And, by the way, could he please identify the soccer team he coached.
He jabbers about “when your son or daughter calls from college to talk about which job offer they should take…. And you try not to choke up when you hear that the one they like is not far from home.”
Which job to take? Doesn’t Romney understand that young people with degrees in their pockets are not choosing between one job close to Mom and Dad and one job on another coast? Instead, they’re scrounging for whatever job they can find to put some money in their pockets and to start their living their lives. And many, instead of getting an entry position with a corporation or a law firm, are slinging burgers and living with Mom and Dad, whom they dearly love and who they’d like to get away from – ASAP.
Romney exhales heavily when “we see that new business opening up downtown. It’s when we go off to work in the morning and see everybody else on the block doing the same.” I’ve been wondering: Precisely which “block” does Romney live on?
But back to Neil Armstrong.
Blathering ever onward, Romney said Armstrong’s spirit embodies “that unique blend of optimism, humility and the utter confidence that when the world needs someone to do the really big stuff, you need an American.” Well, not if you’re talking about other big stuff such as the development of penicillin, the invention of the movable-type printing press, the formulation of aspirin, the use of paper money and the invention of the stethoscope. All done by people who were not Americans.
Maybe Neil Armstrong would have signed on to the Romney campaign. But he never signed and we’ll never know.
Tags: Jeffrey Page, Mitt Romney
September 6th, 2012 at 3:39 pm
Romney doesn’t need to live on the moon in order to masquerade at fearing” (he) might get a pink slip (himself), or pretending he once coached Little League or soccer, or wearing Neil Armstrong’s bootprints stamped in moondust on his invisible “soul.” All it will take to install Willard’s hero in the “Firma-Mitt” is a posthumous Mormon baptism.
September 6th, 2012 at 11:49 pm
I don’t know whether it’s frightening, pitiful or both that Willard “Let them eat cake” Romney is the Republican nominee for president and may actually get elected simply because he isn’t Obama. Those who vote for the “un-Obama,” whoever it might have been that they nominated (and I don’t think it really mattered who), are voters who are basically running away from issues rather than running toward resolutions.
September 12th, 2012 at 9:36 pm
The section of his speech where everybody goes out to work each morning at the same time- it brought back the image of the miners going to work in How Green Was My Valley.
That, or lines of identical 50’s office drones getting into finny cars and pulling out into the morning traffic jam.
The republicans got what they wanted: someone to carry their banner as camouflage for their real motivation: absolute refusal to accept a black man as their leader. His out-loud message is empty because it is not the important part. The fantasy life Mitt sells is only the cover. Inside the tea party republican opposition is roiling with racist hate.
September 13th, 2012 at 12:23 am
I do, of course, concur with your piece, Jeff. You have a tendency to
“hit the nail on the head”. Thanks again. I guess I am not completely alone after all, which is a good thing. I tend to sometimes feel that way and it scares me. However, John Guka, not sure of the spelling, folk singer, in one of his songs – can’t remember which one – says: “I stand alone when the crowd is wrong” . . . tends to give me the courage to do so. I sense you are a kindred spirit. Welcome!