re: #214 Charles Johnson

As he was talking I was struck by his careful and consistent avoidance of any gendered term. He is not the smoothest speaker, I grant you, but I don’t think you could be that consistent without trying. He was talking about what he tried to do as governor to get all welfare recipients working, including those with kids.

If you buy the line that people including women get trapped in poverty and if they end up having kids they are even more trapped… and that getting welfare payments is good but doesn’t help you escape poverty…. what Romney is offering there could be seen as a good thing - indeed supportive of women who are poor and who have young kids — he was saying that his government is willing to pay for child support for kids as young as 2 years old so parents without other options (a grandma who can babysit; a spouse who can afford to stay at home) can enter the workforce and become independent. (We can talk about Nickel and Dimed and there is no doubt that workfare has big flaws…. but it is a topic worthy of discussion not flaming)

Does what he is saying apply to women? Sure! Are women his focus? I don’t think so. Is this heartless/barbaric? I am not sure. How to help poor people out of poverty is an important topic and deserves rational discussion.

I do think it is decidedly unhelpful to use this clip in a Breitbart style gotcha. I think trying to create a fire around this, like your headline did, makes it harder to have a good discussion over how to help single parents, including women, get out of poverty. And in general we need to have more rational discussions, not more political gaming.

Charles as I have said I love your site and the hard, hard work you do showing the ugly underside of the rightwing and how that ugly underside is poisoning the right in general. You have also done a great job showing how the republicans are effectively waging a war on women. I just think you are off target on this one. This one.

I understand why you did it and of course I understand what Obdicut has been so condescendingly been trying to ‘teach’ me… I just think you made a mistake using this clip as a weapon in the political (non)firestorm over this “women and work” thing. That’s all.

Thanks for all your hard work!