We need to stop the spin about Paul Ryan's supposed "blue collar background"

[highplainsdem]

His father and grandfather were lawyers.

His great-grandfather started a construction firm.

He grew up on the block in Janesville with the Georgian Revival mansion he now lives in, and several other family members live nearby.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/08/06/120806fa_fact_lizza

Janesville, Wisconsin, where Ryan was born and still lives, is a riverfront city of sixty-four thousand people in the southeast corner of the state, between Madison and Chicago. Three families, the Ryans, the Fitzgeralds, and the Cullens, sometimes called the Irish Mafia, helped develop the town, especially in the postwar era. The Ryans were major road builders, and today Ryan, Inc., started in 1884 by Paul’s great-grandfather, is a national construction firm. The historic Courthouse section of Janesville is still thick with members of the Ryan clan. At last count, there were eight other Ryan households within a six-block radius of his house, a large Georgian Revival with six bedrooms and eight bathrooms that is on the National Register of Historic Places.

“I grew up on the block I now live on,” Ryan told me recently. We were sitting in his new, more spacious Capitol Hill office, one of the spoils of being in the majority after the 2010 elections. “My aunt and uncle live across the street from me,” he said. “My cousin is next door, my brother is a block away.” Ryan’s line of the family strayed from the construction business, which is now run by his cousin Adam. His grandfather and father became lawyers instead.

[hedda_foil]

1. Since he's never held a job Rmoney would consider "real."

And congressional staffers and congressmen make bupkes as far as Sir Mittenhood is concerned. I'll bet Ryan inherited a nice chunk of shares in the family business or the equivalent in blue chips and bonds if the active branch of the family bought out his dad or granddad, both of whom died youngish. Hmmmm.

[handmade34]

2. this is an excellent read

and worth the time... thanks

[highplainsdem]

3. Thanks! I was glad to find that background on Ryan.

I'm still not sure where the idea that he has a "blue collar background" originated, but I heard it more than once while watching the news late last night, and googling it today turned up a lot of results showing that misleading description of him.

I did run across another article today, based on an interview with the Democrat who ran against him in his first race in 1998, that mentioned he tried to counter the accurate description of him even then as a Washington insider (a staffer) by shooting ads where he was wearing a hard hat at a construction site, pretending to be doing something with building plans. I don't know whether Ryan or anyone on his campaign staff then ever used the words "blue collar background" to describe him, though.