Have you ever watched Real Housewives of New Jersey? of Atlanta? of New York City? of Orange County? How about The Shahs of Sunset? (All on Bravo Network, which I believe also has its own fingernails show.)
Italian drama queens, Southern belles, West Coast hotties, and even Iranian babes, all “..over-indulged with attention and money, defined by their conspicuous consumption, self-centered, vacuous, materialistic and lazy, spoiled, overly-concerned with appearance and socializing.” I could go on but I might get too close to describing the front page of Yahoo! News, or the sort of magazine Obama is granting insightful interviews to these days.
But, who doesn’t know the Kardashians? Lindsay Lohan? And who hasn’t known, since the 1970s at least, the JAP, the Jewish American Princess, the prototype for all these more recent horrors?
The vapid and mindless rich have been with us for years. And so have their bratty spoiled kids.
But Juan Williams stepped on it.
Now Juan isn’t the only one to say mean things about Ann Romney. In April Hilary Rosen said Mrs Romney had never worked a day in her life. The stay-at-home mom under attack again. Then there was the affair over Ann’s $998 sweater (bad) while never a mention of Michelle’s $6800 shirt (good).
We all know the media blitz against Mitt’s wealth, as a man born with a silver spoon in his mouth, their sons as spoiled bratty rich kids, and Ann, a woman with a disease (MS) that will someday kill her, a survivor of breast cancer, but still as some sort of shallow corporate trophy.
What Juan Williams stepped on specifically was any remaining belief that even a vestige of honest journalism can be found inside him.
He’s now officially one of them. But by one of them, I mean the stupid Left, not the mean or political Left. That’s the thread that connects Juan to Hilary and the rest, for it’s clear that none of them have ever inquired into the type of life the Romneys have lived. Or most Mormons, for that matter. They didn’t do their homework, instead drawing certain assumptions from the stereotypes I just mentioned at the beginning. Hilary Rosen assumes Ann Romney would go charging up and down Rodeo Drive with her platinum-plus credit card, dressed like Fran Drescher…because if she had that kind of moolah, that’s how she would do it.
All I can say is there are no Mormon-American Princesses, Hilary.
I’ve lived in the West for many years, and have known and been inside many Mormon communities, including Utah. Affluent communities. Even wealthy.
Mitt is old school about his money, probably taught that way by his father, himself the son of a farmer. (The old English rule was that you have to be idle rich for three generations before you can be a full member of the Aristocracy Club. Everyone else is nouveau riche.) Mitt tithes using the Biblical standard (10%), just as John D Rockefeller did and he doesn’t include taxes in the accounting. He actually gives more to church and charity than to the state, under the quaint notion that the Church and charity can do better things with the money. A few weeks ago I sent a note to one of the Romney staff suggesting that Mitt offer to reveal one tax return per year for every year any Democrat leader will do the same, and match him in total taxes plus charitable giving. (I think this is the same sort of bargaining Abraham did with God to get Lot out Sodom before it was destroyed.)
Nor are there Mormon-American Spoiled Brats, nor Mormon-American Diamond Jim Brady’s. You won’t see a Mormon in Vegas, with open collar shirt and gold chain rolling craps on Saturday night. There are no Mormon John Kerry’s (extravagance), Mormon Al Gore’s (cheapskate), Mormon Bill Clinton’s or John Edwards’ (public debauchery), Mormon Chris Dodd’s (drunks), or Mormon Ted Kennedy’s (craven killers).
You see, that just isn’t part of their community, and the community standard begins when their young men must all take a 2 year missionary trip. At their own expenses. If they were Native Americans you would call this a Vision Quest, and think it’s cool. Only it’s not. It’s a test.
You may have seen them, because they go from door to door, in white shirts and black trousers and ask if they can come in and tell you about their church. They do this because they know they will be turned away, often with a slammed door in their face or a dog sicced on them. It teaches them humility. I always invite them in and we sit and talk about things other than the LDS for fifteen minutes, and drink lemonade, then they leave knowing at least one Gentile will spare them a few minutes.
To be sure, there are a few Jack Mormons out there who will take a drink, but usually not in front of other Mormons. And there’s the Harry Reid type, who is a Mormon two months out of every election cycle, the rest of the time a liar. Politics and power will do that to a man, any man, and the Democrat party has corrupted more mens’ souls than Bain Capital or money alone ever could.
If anything, Mormons are a little on the dull side, stay-at-home types. So if the doyens of the Beltway thought Washington was bad during the Bush years, just wait til the Romneys hit town. There will be all kinds of cookie-baking going on, Hillary.
And the prayer breakfast will be back. The hand over the heart at the saying of the Pledge will be standard operating equipment again. I also expect Jews won’t have to sneak out the back door of the White House. Maybe the Brits will return the Churchill bust. Manners will return to Washington. Dull old good manners.
But most of all, the 75% of other women out there will be reminded that one does not have to have multiple sex partners, demand to have contraception and be able to kill their babies up to the first one-minute after delivery, both free of charge, just to be able to be called a woman.
